Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing is seeking to “cash in” on the Facebook phenomenon — he is in talks to acquire a stake in the Palo Alto, Calif., social networking site.
The 79-year-old chairman of the conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. would invest $60 million in Facebook Inc., giving Li a stake of about .04 percent in the closely held company, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in October.
Reports of Li’s move fueled talk that TOM Group Ltd., a media and Internet company controlled by Hutchison with operations in China, could form a partnership with Facebook, which currently has no operations in the communist country.