West End shows backer attacks City treatment of Chinese firms

The Hong Kong businessman behind one of AIM’s biggest controversies today hit out at City investors for their “suspicion” of Chinese companies and called for an overhaul of London’s junior market.

Johnny Hon, chairman of West End theatre productions investor Gate Ventures and Hong Kong venture-capital firm Global Group, said the perception of Chinese companies is “incorrect”.

“You cannot generalise and label anything Chinese as risky,” Hon told the Standard.

It comes a day after Chinese sportswear company Naibu revealed its shareholders were £150 million out of pocket after its Chinese founder and its production boss had both vanished.

Gate Ventures went on an incredible stock market run in 2015 as just a shell company with Hon as an investor and consultant, rocketing 1500% in a few months before its nominated adviser (nomad) Beaumont Cornish quit and it was delisted.

Since then, Hon has been made chairman and, with the help of TV and theatre veterans Lord Michael Grade and Michael Linnit, Gate has backed the West End revivals of Sunset Boulevard and 42nd Street.

“When I talk to some of the City professionals, there’s a lot of unnecessary negativity towards Chinese, which is very unfair,” he said.

“A lot of the Gate Ventures investors are British citizens, they’re British-Chinese so you cannot single out because they look Chinese or ethnically they’re Chinese — it’s just not right.”

He said AIM needed to change its “old-fashioned” system and claimed its light regulation made it easy for firms whose corporate governance is not up to scratch to list in London.

Since its AIM fiasco, Gate has floated on Nasdaq First North in Copenhagen, an alternative European stock exchange.

He said being able to talk directly with regulators there, instead of through the nomad which acts as the middleman on AIM, is “a much better way of dealing”.

Naibu’s UK directors confirmed yesterday they were considering suing the advisers who allowed the company to float on AIM.