Not many people turn down a job offer from Li Ka-shing, but Craig Ehrlich, Sunday Communications group managing director, did. He had never heard of the Hong Kong tycoon.
When it was repeated, Mr Ehrlich, a Los Angeles native who was at the time running a United States cable-television company, decided he had better check this man out.
Soon afterwards, he swapped his Santa Monica beach house for a Hong Kong flat and was running Hutchison Cablevision, which was to be the first cable-television company in Asia.
Two roller-coaster years followed and the rest is media history. The germ of the regional satellite TV station buried in the concept of Cablevision then caught the beady eye of Mr Li's son, Richard Li Tzar-kai, who was looking for a business to grow. That was Star Television.
After a year of developing Star, Mr Ehrlich moved to Hutchison Telecommunications as group operations director.
He joined Rick Siemens, now chairman of Sunday, the man who had built Hutchison's mobile-phone presence from scratch to become the biggest player in Hong Kong before he fell out with Li Ka-shing.
Mr Ehrlich cut free from the Li family in 1993, a move which was 'a bit sensitive'.
