Unfounded rumours disappoint football fans
Perhaps the last thing tycoon Li Ka-shing wants is a football team in Europe: He already owns too many - arguably non-performing - businesses there.
Over the weekend, local media picked up a story about how Mr Li was buying Italian football giant Inter Milan for Euro350 million (HK$3.85 billion). Unfortunately for Hong Kong football fans, Hutchison Whampoa categorically denied the purchase.
We then called Henderson Land (whose deputy chairman Martin Lee Ka-shing's name sounds the same in Cantonese as the Hutchison Whampoa chairman's), which confirmed that Mr Lee was not involved in the deal either. Ditto for Carson Yeung Ka-sing, who owns Birmingham Football Club.
It all started with sport website Francorossi.com, which carried extensive details about Mr Li's supposed offer. Not many in the Italian mainstream press took it seriously because they knew 3 Italia chief executive Vincenzo Novari was a die-hard fan of AC Milan but not of its rival Inter Milan.
But the incident underscored how easily Mr Li's name can surface in international business deals, often for the wrong reasons. Last December, a British blogger carried a fake Securities and Exchange Commission filing that showed Mr Li's Hutchison was selling 15 per cent of his loss-making 3G business to China Telecom for HK$9.4 billion.