News Corp chief flies in as HKT takeover threatens Star venture

Rupert Murdoch will meet Pacific Century CyberWorks chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai in Hong Kong next week to discuss the future of the Star TV-Cable & Wireless HKT pay-television joint venture.

Confirmation of Mr Murdoch's visit came as both sides expressed willingness to co-operate, raising the prospects that the venture will go ahead as planned.

The future of the Star-HKT project has come into question following Mr Li's victory this week in the takeover battle for HKT.

CyberWorks' plans to create a pan-Asian broadband Internet service puts it in direct competition with Star TV, a unit of Mr Murdoch's News Corp.

Mr Murdoch backed rival bidder Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) with a US$1 billion commitment and was quoted this week in the Financial Times as saying Mr Li had made 'no secret he would screw us out of the partnership with HKT'.

However, Mr Li said yesterday: 'We have information that News Corp still wants to talk on this topic. We are quite open-minded.' Asked to respond to Mr Murdoch's comment, he said: 'Mr Murdoch might have been very angry [when he said that] but I choose to forget it.' Mr Li said the future of the venture would be decided purely on commercial grounds and CyberWorks might even expand its co-operation with News Corp if it benefited shareholders.