Li has never seen a brighter outlook

Seated in his penthouse on the 70th floor of Cheung Kong Center, Li Ka-shing looks in every way a man at the peak of his power. After half a century of legendary deal-making, he is Asia's best-known businessman, one of the world's wealthiest individuals and poised for a new round of international expansion.

The opulence of his surroundings speaks for these achievements. Although the swimming pool is discretely tucked away beyond a large-scale ornamental Chinese garden, it is possible to gauge its size against a retractable ceiling some 20 metres above the recreation area.

Six massive chandeliers illuminate the dining room from which a select few local and international business and political leaders will be able to survey a 180-degree slice of a Hong Kong skyline dotted with the buildings which provided the foundations for Mr Li's fortune.

The chairman's private office is of more modest proportions. Exquisite Chinese jade statues and scrolls decorate the sparsely furnished room. However, the two computer screens on his desk, which were turned on throughout our 80-minute interview, give the sense that it is business as usual for the 71-year-old chairman of Cheung Kong despite the recent transference of certain authority to his son, Victor Li Tzar-kuoi.

At all turns, stringent security in the form of personal guards and close-circuit television is a reminder of how life has changed for Hong Kong's rich and famous.

The meeting with Mr Li had been three years in the making. Regular requests for an interview had been politely turned down, the rejections accompanied by suggestions that the chairman was dissatisfied with the South China Morning Post's coverage of his companies.

It would be difficult to imagine how some of the hundreds of articles published by this newspaper concerning his three listed companies - Cheung Kong (Holdings), Hutchison Whampoa and Cheung Kong Infrastructure - during the past three years would not have aroused the displeasure of a man with such a pervasive influence over the life of Hong Kong.