EVERYONE in Hong Kong knows about Li Ka-shing's daily golf game, his 'Superman' nickname, his youngest son Richard's flashy corporate braces and his pretty girlfriends. Larry Yung Chi-kin's equine interests are a matter of record. The territory is still waiting for Gordon Wu Ying-sheung to fulfil his pledge to take a plunge in Victoria Harbour, for Dickson Poon to buy a second upmarket British store and for Michael Kadoorie to buy another fleet of Rolls-Royces for The Peninsula - but just who is Peter Woo Kwong-ching? Yes, he is chairman of the Wheelock Group with its collective asset value of more than US$12 billion (HK$92.6 billion), his membership of boards and committees as diverse as the Hospital Authority, Hong Kong Polytechnic, the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum and his position as an adviser to Sichuan Provincial People's Government. Yet none of this really tells us who Woo is.
That we know so little is not because he is afraid of publicity - his bulging newspaper-cuttings files are evidence of that, and of the territory's fascination with the man. 'As a measure of fame, Peter got far more attention, measured in reporter-minutes, than Canto-pop star Leon Lai,' quipped the South China Morning Post 's Lai See column after a Christmas charity event in Times Square last year.
In the past four years, Woo's profile and that of Wheelock and its main subsidiary, Wharf (Holdings), has grown substantially. Under Woo's stewardship the company, formerly the empire of his father-in-law and one of Hong Kong's most celebrated tycoons, the late Sir Yue-kong Pao, has moved into telecommunications, following the end of Hong Kong Telecom's monopoly of domestic services, and has the vast potential of China in its sights. Woo has also overseen the opening of the Times Square complex in Causeway Bay, the successful tender for the third cross-harbour tunnel, the building of several ritzy property developments in Hong Kong, a land bank in China of more than 600,000 square metres and a large stake in the development of Wuhan. Having assembled a management team he felt could take Wharf into the next century, Woo stepped down as chairman to concentrate on his role at Wheelock, Wharf's dominant shareholder.
Even as he was becoming a more public figure, his private life has remained something of an enigma. 'In the past several years, he has allowed the outside world to get to know him better,' said one former colleague. 'But maybe it's difficult for people to see that.' Certainly, anyone who leafed through the articles in which Woo expounded on his business strategy or China's economic potential would have found few clues as to the man behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, Lanvin suit and Cheshire Cat grin.
Those who keep up to date on environmental issues might be more enlightened as to the nature of the man who once used to swim across the harbour. 'Can you imagine doing that now? The environment is the biggest assassin of all, it is slowly killing us,' Woo has said.
'You can choose the food you eat, the water you drink, but unless you are planning to run around Central with scuba gear on, you have no choice but to breathe the air,' he commented after Wheelock donated $50 million to help clean up the environment. But even that apparently altruistic gesture had an ulterior motive; to make the territory a more pleasant place to live and therefore prevent a further brain drain. Woo, it seems, is all business.