Damien Hirst and Li Ka-shing: a couple of sharp operators

Yesterday the world's most influential art dealer, Larry Gagosian, opened his first Asian gallery in Hong Kong's Pedder Building with an exhibition by celebrity British artist Damien Hirst featuring the diamond-encrusted cast of a dead baby's skull.

Hirst is the perfect artist to inaugurate Gagosian's Hong Kong branch. He suits the city's character in so many ways.

For one thing, as Hirst has cheerfully confessed in any number of interviews, he has little artistic talent. The former construction worker admits he can't draw or paint, and he only scraped into art college after a series of rejections.

Still, a lack of talent has proved no bar to Hirst's success. He first hit the headlines in 1992 with a pickled shark carcass improbably entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a work he followed up with a pickled sheep (Away from the Flock) and a gruesomely bisected cow and calf combination (Mother and Child Divided).

His bad boy reputation established, Hirst soon diversified, producing large numbers of signature dot paintings and realistic butterfly paintings.

Given his lack of talent, however, Hirst rapidly decided that his personal involvement in the production process was unnecessary. Instead he hired a workforce of employees to do the actual painting, leaving him free to concentrate on other business opportunities, including pop videos and clothing lines.

Any Hong Kong tycoon would have been proud. But it was in his financial dealings that Hirst really stood out. In 2007, he made headlines all round the world when he exhibited his first diamond-studded skull. Commissioned from jewellers Bentley & Skinner at an estimated cost of GBP10 million (HK$123 million), this disturbing memento mori was promptly snapped up by a group of investors for GBP50 million - equal to HK$795 million at the time - smashing the record price for a living artist.