My acquaintanceship with Jho Low [Low Taek Jho] began in early 2013 after we met through our involvement in the music industry, when Jho was a Non-Executive Chairman of EMI Music Publishing and I was a co-founder and director of Faith & Hope Records (which I still am).
At the time, EMI publishing was one of the World’s largest music publishers and Jho – a Malaysian businessman and financier who had made a $100 million plus investment in the Sony led consortium that acquired EMI Music Publishing for $2.2 billion the year earlier – was on the board and high on my list of music executives that I wanted to know.
Jho had studied in the sixth form at Harrow School in the late 1990’s and loved London. Although his business card showed a fancy office block address in Hong Kong, I assumed [wrongly] that he was permanently based in London as he had an expensive Stratton Street flat – right in the centre of town – and had business offices a few doors further down Stratton Street.
By early 2013, Jho had already been involved with financing the film company Red Granite Pictures – which at the time was shooting ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ – and I wanted to get our Faith & Hope music on the film, but failed. Over the next couple of years, I continued to try and get our music on future Red Granite films like ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ and ‘Daddy’s Home’, and also failed.
Jho and I pretty much hit it off immediately and I feel it was initially due to the fact that we both felt like ‘outsiders’, even to the point where Penang (where Jho is from) and Morecambe (where I live) are both on the northwest coasts of our respective countries and out on a limb geographically, commercially and culturally. I also quickly realised that we were both totally different ‘social animals’ – him liking big lavish parties with celebrities and me liking quiet dinners with friends – so the old ‘Met Bar’ [now closed] at COMO Metropolitan was always a good halfway house for us after dinner.
By late 2013, Jho was still relatively new to the music industry and as an EMI music publishing board member, knew little about the mechanics of music publishing, but that was ok as he was a de jure figurehead rather than a hands-on catalogue guy. The great thing about Jho was he was keen and excited to be involved with the artists and was finding out about the industry from whoever and wherever he could.
By this point, my career had gone ok. The label I co-own had luckily had a string of UK chart hits that included a 2008 #1 off the back of Simon Cowell’s TV show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’; our music was on Hollywood films like Vanilla Sky, Serendipity and the re-make of Get Carter; we had music on the adverts for Volkswagen and Hugo Boss; and my label co-director (Neil Claxton AKA Mint Royale) had just finished a track called ‘Ring’ that featured the actor Willem Dafoe which was to be used for the 2014 Super Bowl ESPN Promo [watch].
By the late spring of 2014, I was going through a difficult time personally (due to a long-term marriage break up) and in what seemed a relatively short period of time, Jho and I had found out a lot about one another (upbringings, families, businesses) and I enjoyed his company, conversation and found him warm, open and kind.
There is no doubt that Jho had a lot of plates spinning back then and names like Wynton, Jynwel, Lilestone and Myla were mentioned. He always had a great team of loyal staff around him and although I can not remember all their names… Cat, Sue, Eric, Diane, Riza, Szen, and Jesselynn (who I believe he has married and now has children with) were around or mentioned.
As well as his investments in Red Granite Pictures and EMI Publishing, Jho was also trying to buy [with others] Reebok from Adidas in a $2 billion deal and a hotel group that included Claridges in another $1 billion deal. Although these two deals did not come off, the loss of the Claridges deal seemed to be more personal than business to him.
By summer 2014, Jho looked and acted like a legitimate and incredibly successful businessman and philanthropist, who was being written about positively in publications like ‘Forbes’ and ‘The New York Times’. He was involved at board level with a whole load of businesses and although there are too many names to list, as well as EMI and Red Granite, I remember talk of companies involved in real estate, hotels, clothing, commodities and infrastructure.
I certainly did not suspect or expect that Jho would ever be accused of any financial wrongdoings and still find it hard to believe that it is alleged that he was involved with something like the situation with 1Malaysia Development Berhad [1MDB].
Some of Jho’s acquaintances have come in for fierce and severe criticism with harsh accusations being made since the situation with 1MDB. Some think Jho’s acquaintances were ‘naive’, others think acquaintances ‘must have known something was going on’… and sadly, the latter sentiment still lingers today.
What needs to be remembered is that back in early 2015, Jho was flying high, literally! He was flying around the world in his $35 million private jet; floating around the world on his $250 million 300-feet megayacht; travelling around in a fleet of luxury limousines; living in the most amazing homes around the world; buying artwork by Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, and Warhol; throwing lavish parties with A-list celebrities in attendance; rubbing shoulders with world leaders and royalty; doing deals with governments and international banks; and he had been dating the supermodel Miranda Kerr.
Since 2015, there has been considerable work done by very diligent and highly respected journalists in relation to Jho’s life. Books have been written, documentaries made, podcasts broadcast, and there is even a $JHOLOW investigative meme coin that is being used to crowdsource a crypto award scheme in an attempt to gather information from the public to locate him.
Whatever Jho did or did not do in relation to 1MDB, at the time, he looked like a plausible and incredibly successful businessman. Although there were rumours in the press of irregularity around his involvement in 1MDB in 2015, these rumours passed me by and it was not until 2016 that I was aware of the situation with 1MDB.
I last saw Jho in London at the beginning of autumn / fall of 2014 and we were in touch a few times between then and the spring of 2015. Since then, I have not seen him, I have not heard from him, and his old Hong Kong direct dial number [ending 2911] rings, but is never answered.
Why this page has been published.
I have written this page so I can simply direct people to it if asked about my acquaintanceship with Jho Low between 2013 and 2015. Although it has been a long time since I last had contact with Jho, there has been great intrigue, speculation, controversy and fallout around him since 2015, with some people losing their liberty. Other than the information on this page, I do not have any further information to offer or add about him and respectfully ask that people do not contact me in relation to Jho or 1MDB. Kindest regards, David Wood.