Life is good again for Hong Kong's tycoons. Last year's financial crisis had left many of the city's richest and most prominent businessmen reeling, as the values of their companies and investments on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange collapsed.
The 40 richest inhabitants saw their combined personal wealth drop from $179bn in 2007 to $82bn last year, according to Forbes annual rich list. Even “superman” Li Ka-shing, the city's richest person, who heads a sprawling international property, oil and gas and telecommunications empire, had lost half his fortune.
Adding insult to injury, the tycoons, who had been admired during the boom years as savvy investors and masterful stock-pickers, had to endure pesky questions from journalists about how much money they had lost through buying at the wrong time complex structured products with such names as accumulators and bull/bear contracts.