Rapid rise of media empire

Yu Pun-hoi rapidly expanded his media business in the 1990s, including taking over Ming Pao newspaper from late Chinese martial arts novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung.

In 1991, Yu, who returned to Hong Kong after studying in Canada, competed with media mogul Rupert Murdoch to buy Ming Pao and lost. But after the deal fell through Yu eventually took over the helm as Ming Pao's chairman at the age of 33.

Yu also launched Xian Dai Daily newspaper in China, and acquired Yazhou Zhoukan from Time Warner in 1994. In 1992, he launched the Wuhan Cable TV station. Wuhan Cable was China's first foreign-owned media and its last.

Yu set up the first internet service provider in Hong Kong, HKNet, in the early 1990s, which gave Ming Pao its first Chinese-language website.

In 1994, Yu founded the first 24-hour global Chinese-language news network, the Chinese Television Network.

Yu led the network's worldwide exclusive report on the death of leader Deng Xiaoping in 1997. CTN broke the news live more than an hour before state media Xinhua confirmed it. Subsequently, CTN was sold in 1997 after the network suffered a loss of US$100 million (HK$780 million).

In 2009, Yu acquired the New York-based Duowei News website, which reported mainly on Chinese political news. Duowei's website and mobile app closed in 2022.

Yu launched online media HK01 in 2015.