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Ben Kwok

Li Ka-shing pays his big cats top dollar
How much did the top cats working for  Li Ka-shing make last year?
Let's start from the very top. Hutchison Whampoa group managing director Canning Fok Kin-ning last year made HK$147.98 million, up 13 per cent from 2006.
More specifically, Mr Fok earned HK$400,000 per day, HK$17,000 per hour, HK$280 per minute and almost HK$5 per second.
Next in line was Cheung Kong (Holdings) managing director Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, who saw his pay cheque  rise to HK$96.7 million (HK$51.56 million from Hutchison and HK$45.14 million from Cheung Kong), up almost 20 per cent.
To put things into perspective, the elder princeling made HK$265,000 per day, HK$11,000 per hour, HK$184 per minute and HK$3 per second.
Among directors who made more than HK$1 per second, we counted also Hutchison deputy managing director Susan Chow Woo Mo-fong (HK$40.12 million, up 15 per cent), finance director Frank Sixt (HK$38.04 million, up 12 per cent) and director Dominic Lai Kai-ming (HK$31.01 million, up 72 per cent), who enjoyed the biggest pay rise among the 11 executives receiving an eight-digit pay cheque.
As for the chairman himself, he received HK$50,000 from Hutchison, which he paid back to Cheung Kong, and took a director's fee of a mere HK$5,000. But don't worry about him. Mr Li received HK$2.27 billion in dividends, or HK$6.2 million per day, HK$260,000 per hour, HK$4,300 per minute and HK$72 per second.
In the two-and-a-half minutes you spent reading this, Mr Li  earned HK$10,000. Now go and make your efforts pay off.
Chan pay outpaces peers'
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who  is the highest paid of them all in the utilities sector?
Hong Kong and China Gas chief executive Alfred Chan Wing-kin last year made HK$24.3 million, up 26.6 per cent.
Mr Chan surpassed his counterparts in the two electricity suppliers both in absolute dollar terms and the percentage of salary increase.
Elusive Wu
He might have been an absent-minded independent non-executive director, but he was consistent.
Last year, Sir Gordon Wu Ying-sheung only attended one out of five meetings at i-Cable Communications, while receiving a director fee of HK$60,000.
Sir Gordon, who joined the cable television firm as director in 2001, attended only one meeting each year for three consecutive years.
Holidays from Hong Kong
Question of the day: How many more Hong Kong people travelled to Macau than to Guangzhou last year?
About four times.
Yesterday, Guangshen Railway reported that it carried 3.19 million passengers on its express trains between Hong Kong and Guangzhou last year, down 0.5 per cent from the year before.
That worked out to be about 8,745 per day, or just  a quarter of the 35,000 daily passenger flow recorded by Shun Tak Holdings' TurboJet.
With the proposed construction of the Guangzhou-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, the travel time to Guangzhou and Macau from Hong Kong is expected to be  cut by two-thirds.
Will that be an incentive for more Hong Kong residents to go to Guangzhou instead of Macau?
Cold spell warms Giordano
The snowstorms early this year may have hurt most Chinese corporates, but at least one winner emerged.
It is Giordano. Thanks to the cold spell, which coincided with the selling season of Lunar New Year, the mass-market apparel retailer recorded some 30 per cent  sales growth in the first quarter, with 30 per cent of turnover coming from the mainland.
Giordano was luckier than down coat-maker Bosideng, which analysts estimated would have suffered a low winter season  as snowstorms created transport and distribution bottlenecks for the mainland company.
However, Giordano did not benefit much in Hong Kong, which also witnessed a three-week-long cold spell.
Sales increased only by a mid-single digit in the first quarter, Giordano's management  said.



Lai See