City profiles
Sir James Dyson Now 70, Sir James Dyson has been designing vacuum cleaners for “exactly half his life”, says Harry de Quetteville in The Daily Telegraph. But the decades haven’t dimmed his technical curiosity about how things “might be improved”. He enjoys critiquing his Japanese electronic toilet so much that “one can’t help but wonder” if he’s “hinting at the possibility” of a Dyson model. For now, though, “the most exciting device in his pipeline” is an electric, semi-autonomous car, due in 2021. We live in a nation where “making money is rather demonised”, says Sir James, who insists he’s “not a good businessman”. But he’s not bad, either: now worth some £7.8bn, Dyson is thought to be the biggest landowner in the country, with more acres even than the Queen. “Hong Kongers view their tycoons with a mix of pride and envy,” said Lex in the FT. “The most emblematic of them all”, Li Ka-shing, 89, is now retiring, handing control of his CK Hutchison property and telecoms empire to his son Victor Li. “His career says much about the history of Hong Kong.” Arriving in the colony as a penniless refugee and leaving school at 12, Li “started out making plastic flowers” – and came to prominence in 1979 when he bought a stake in Hutchison Whampoa, one of the colony’s swankiest British trading houses. He’s now worth an estimated $34bn. In Hong Kong, they call Li “Superman”, said The Sunday Times. He’s certainly a global opportunist and visionary. “He belongs to the China that sought the blue ocean rather than the slowmoving Yellow River.”