When a great investor speaks, it’s best to keep an eye on the direction of his feet as well as his mouth.

Li Ka-shing has pooh-poohed the notion that his commitment to Hong Kong is waning, saying in 2012 that he has a “special feeling” for the city and “definitely” won’t withdraw investments.

Special feelings are for Japanese snowstorms and favorite sports teams. Business is business.

Friday’s news that Hutchison Whampoa is close to buying 02 of the U.K. for as much as $15 billion seals an impression that has been building for years.

Li has seen the future: and it’s in Europe.

We aren’t suggesting that the billionaire plans to dismantle Cheung Kong Center brick by brick and reassemble it in EC2 (just as well, given that the building houses Bloomberg’s Hong Kong office — we can’t stand those London winters.)

Still, the trend is undeniable. In the past two years, Li tried to offload Hutchison’s Hong Kong supermarket chain (before instead selling a stake in its retail unit for $5.7 billion), raised $3.1 billion listing Hong Kong electricity assets and sold part of its port holdings in the city.

Over the same period, Hutchison bought Telefonica’s Irish unit for $1.1 billion, purchased more mobile spectrum in Austria and held talks to acquire wireless assets in