Lee vs. Superboy

Still, analysts had been predicting a 20 percent slide. "They thought we were going to fall off a cliff," SingTel CEO Lee Hsien Yang tells Institutional Investor.

For Lee, son of SingTel founder Lee Kuan Yew, the stronger-than-expected showing (and relatively robust performance for 2001) was a personal as well as a professional vindication. Two years ago the SingTel chief was widely criticized when he lost the bidding for Cable & Wireless HKT to rival Richard Li, son of another legend, Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing. When the younger Li's Pacific Century CyberWorks - at the time, a hot Internet start-up with a sky-high stock price - snapped up Cable & Wireless HKT, the press promptly dubbed Li (who's now 34) Superboy.

Today Lee, 44, is the one flying high. Even as SingTel was beating analysts' estimates, shares of Li's PCCW, deflated by the Internet stock collapse, were tumbling - some 95 percent between February 2000 and late December, to HK$2.12 (27 cents).

Lee says he was happy to walk away from the Cable & Wireless deal rather than pay too much. "We've always told people we'd rather be the winning loser than the losing winner," he declares.