Why Hong Kong won when Li Ka-shing lost

For the past year Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has embarked on a massive restructuring of his two sprawling conglomerates Cheung Kong and Hutchison Whampoa, to turn them into tidier corporate structures. Along the way he has faced relatively little real opposition to these plans from minority shareholders.

Until, that is, Li tried to subsume Power Assets Holdings into his new corporate structure.

On Tuesday, minority shareholders of the Hong Kong-based utility company voted against an increased offer from Cheung Kong Infrastructure to buy the 61% of the company that it doesn't already own for $12.4 billion.

The offer consisted of a...