Lee up, Li down; SingTel's Lee v PCCW 's Li.(Business)(Lee Hsien Yang; Richard Li)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, March, 2001

WHAT a difference a year makes. Last March, Lee Hsien Yang, the chief executive of Singapore Telecom (SingTel) was smarting over a defeat at the hands of Richard Li, the boss of PCCW, at the time an up-and-coming Internet company. Mr Li had just snatched Hong Kong's telecoms incumbent, HKT, away from Mr Lee (the two have the same Chinese name, but transliterate it differently). For SingTel, worse was to follow. In May, it was rebuffed again, this time from buying a Malaysian telecoms firm. PCCW, by contrast, sealed deal after deal-and Mr Li became a cyber-celebrity.

That was not how things looked this week. On March 26th, SingTel's Mr Lee was able to declare victory after a long struggle to buy the second-largest telecoms operator in Australia, Optus. The $8...

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