Richard Li and Rupert Murdoch to join forces against Bloomberg?

Richard Li – “not happy”? Image source

A pseudonymous blogger who apparently has some inside sources sent the following link to Danwei: Taking aim at Bloomberg, Hong Kong Billionaire Richard Li and Rupert Murdoch join forces

Excerpt:

Hong Kong telecommunications mogul Richard Li and global media baron Rupert Murdoch have partnered to challenge the dominance of Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters in the delivery of real-time financial news and data to professional investors around the world, a bold move likely to shake up the US$16 billion global financial data and news market.

Li, billionaire chairman of Hong Kong telecommunications company PCCW, has built a Bloomberg-style financial data terminal to deliver live prices, market data and analytical tools to traders and investors around the world and, according to people familiar with the situation, the terminal will carry the news of Dow Jones, the financial news icon now part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation….

…The existence of the Li’s venture — provisionally called Cai Business Indepth Limited — and its agreement with News Corp. has been a closely guarded secret; no public announcements has been made. But rumors about the venture and its ambitions have been circulating in Hong Kong and China since early 2009…

[Editor’s note: Cai Indepth is already operating, see website linked below]

…After several delays, the official launch is expected sometime in 2010, and News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch himself is rumored to be attending…

…For news coverage of China, along with translations from the Hong Kong Economic Journal, in which Li bought a 50% stake in 2006, Li signed a deal with Caijing magazine and its renowned editor, Hu Shuli. Caijing’s stories were to be translated into English and edited by a team in Beijing and then run on Li’s terminal. But that deal fell through when internal wrangling at Caijing prompted Hu to quit to start her own magazine. Hu and Li are no longer pursuing a deal and Li is now scrambling to stitch up a deal with another mainland business publication…

…Until now, most reporting on Li’s new business has been incidental, made in relation to Caijing and Hu Shuli, which misses the point: For Li, Caijing and Hu Shuli are small fry. His main content partner is Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., a media empire that spans the globe with cable and satellite television, film, newspapers, websites, book publishing and, since 2007, Dow Jones.

Danwei could not get any independent confirmation of this story. Senior staff at Dow Jones and at Cai Indepth did not reply to emails asking for confirmation of the story.

After I posted a message on Twitter asking for information, someone who described himself as an insider replied anonymously with the following comment on Richard Li:

He’s super tight — apparently not happy with the long time it took to launch the service and the little results delivered since it launched. He’s not willing to put in more money….