It has a reputation as Asia's most wily asset trader.
"Li has always been an asset trader and it looks like a good time to sell," Week in China wrote.
So Priory also wants to distinguish himself as an asset trader.
"When it comes to SIA's aircraft fleet, Chew has proven to be a consummate asset trader," says analyst Negline.
"My father was an asset trader," says Stelios. "Greek shipowners like to boast, "I bought ships at the bottom of the market and now they're worth ten times as much".
Mr Li, by contrast, is, on the face of it, the archetypal Asian asset-trader.
Mr Li first made an offer in January, then withdrew it, and then came back with a new offer, two-thirds lower.More than just a traderYet even the label "asset-trader", appropriate for most Asian tycoons, appears too small to fit Mr Li.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has moved to freeze the assets of traders accused of illegally trading in shares in advance of the announced $15 billion acquisition of a Canadian oil producer by the state-owned Chinese oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc.
These factors, along with the Federal Reserve's efforts to keep interest rates ultralow and encourage investors to put more money into riskier assets, prompted traders to send the Dow past 14,000 to within 75 points of a record high last week.
In a joint letter to the European Commission president, Jos?anuel Barroso, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that Europe needed to speed up proposals on financial regulation, including the possibility of banning the kinds of bets against assets that traders do not actually own -- a practice known as naked short-selling.
