HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. billionaire Paul Singer appears to have paved the way for activist investors to fight for shareholders’ rights where few hedge funds have ventured: Asia’s biggest family-run firms. In the past few months, Singer’s $26 billion firm Elliott Management has taken on South Korea’s Lee family, founders of the Samsung Group [SAGR.UL], as well as the Li family, which founded Hong Kong’s third-largest lender Bank of East Asia Ltd (BEA) .