Through my involvement in the music industry, I first met Jho Low [Low Taek Jho] in early 2013, when he was a non-executive chairman of EMI music publishing and I was a co founder and director of the Faith & Hope record label (which I still am).
At the time, EMI was one of the largest music publishers in the World, and Jho – a Malaysian businessman and financier who made a $100 million plus investment in the Sony led consortium that acquired EMI for $2.2 billion the year earlier – was on the board of EMI and high on my list of music executives that I felt I wanted and needed to know.
Even though Jho’s business card showed an address in a fancy high rise office block in Hong Kong at 50 Connaught Road Central, I wrongly assumed that he was permanently living in London. The Hong Kong block where his office was, had an ostentatious entrance hall which was incredibly impressive and must have been at least four floors high.
Its external design had a strange feeling of familiarity, and I quickly realised it reminded me architecturally of Essex House in New York. As well as Jho’s business in the block at the time, it was also the regional home to the business jet company, Gulfstream; the jewellery designer, Cindy Chao; and Manchester United football club, who had chosen the building for their first office in Asia, following their IPO the year before in 2012.
The reason I wrongly assumed that Jho was permanently living in London was because, he’d studied in the sixth form at Harrow School in the late 90’s, loved London, his family had a flat over in Kensington, and he had a nice flat on Stratton Street. I really couldn’t imagine anyone owning such a beautiful flat – in such an expensive part of London – and not living in it permanently.
The flat was above the HSBC and Langan’s Brasserie, a lovely restaurant that is fortunate to have amazing artwork inspired by the likes of David Hockney, Francis Bacon and Patrick Procktor, because at one point, its owners – Peter Langan and the actor Sir Michael Caine – were happy for artists to pay for meals in artwork.
By early 2013, Jho had already been involved with financing the film company Red Granite Pictures – which was shooting ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ at the time – and I wanted to get our music on the film, but failed. Over the next couple of years, I continued to try and get music on Red Granite films like ‘Dumb and Dumber To’, and ‘Daddy’s Home’, but also failed.
I felt quite empathetic towards Jho, because we both had the feeling of being ‘outsiders’, even to the point where Penang (where Jho is from) and Morecambe (where my businesses are based and I now live) are both on the northwest coastlines of our respective countries, and out on a limb geographically, commercially and culturally.
This ‘outsiders’ feeling was cemented, when both Penang and Morecambe were brought up in a conversation about a ‘1Malaysia concert’ that Jho was promoting, which was to take place on a school field in Penang in the late April.
1Malaysia was an initiative to promote unity in the country, and amongst lots of regional and international artists, the American rapper ‘Busta Rhymes’ was performing; and all the concertgoers had to pay was 1 Malaysian Ringgit [RM1], which was about 33 US cents at the time [just a third of a dollar].
In the early 80’s, Busta stayed in Morecambe for two extended summers (when he was only eleven and twelve years old) at his aunt Velma’s house, and she enrolled him into a local school. At the time he was in Morecambe, Busta liked to be known as ‘TJ’ – as his real name is Trevor Smith Jr – and he and his younger brother Paul were known as ‘TJ and Paul’, and got work as a breakdance crew in clubs, even though they were underage.
Shortly after the Penang gig, Jho was buzzing because the concert was a great success with well over 75,000 concertgoers attending [some reports said 100,000]. For anyone interested, Busta mentions Morecambe on the remix of Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ that features his rap. [Watch from 2:25, Morecambe’s mentioned at 2:35].
Busta and Jho already knew one another before the Penang gig because Busta had played his birthday party the year before; but after the Penang gig, they were “hanging out more” in the US; although a few years later, it was reported that Jho had offended Busta in Ann Minceieli’s New York studio, over a joke that Jho had with Busta. Although laddish and uncouth, it was clearly just a silly joke between mates.
Jho and I were totally different social animals, with him liking to party hard at big lavish celebrity parties, and me liking to have small quiet dinners with friends, so the old ‘Met Bar’ [now closed] at COMO Metropolitan was always a good compromise.
We both undoubtedly shared a love of good food, beautiful restaurants, so as well as Langan’s and the fine dining restaurants in some of London’s hotels, the restaurants Cipriani’s, Harry’s Bar, Quaglino’s, and Cecconi’s were all frequented.
By summer of 2013, Jho – as an EMI board member – was very keen and excited to be involved with their artists; and was finding out about the music industry from whoever and wherever he could. Although still relatively new to the industry, he still knew surprisingly little about the mechanics of how music publishing actually worked.
Luckily though, this lack of publishing knowledge seemed to be accepted by senior EMI managers, because they either didn’t know the situation, or just accepted that Jho was a de jure figurehead through his shareholding, and not a hands on catalogue guy.
At this time, Jho was spending more time in the US, and the gossip in the music industry, which is nearly always wrong, was that he had an amazing penthouse flat in New York and an estate in the Hollywood hills. And for once, the gossip was correct!
Jho’s New York flat overlooked central park and was so big, it covered half the top of 1 central park west; and his Los Angeles house at 14 23 Oriole Drive, was incredible when Jho had it, but a friend sent me a YouTube video showing the property abandoned a few years later. [watch].
The main reason Jho was in the US more in the summer 2013, was because he was trying to buy [with others] the ‘Park Lane Hotel New York’ at 36 Central Park South, which also overlooked central park like his flat did, and he got the deal over the line shortly after.
I had one of those weird ‘small world’ moments, as I knew a girl who had a flat on the next block in Essex House at 160 Central Park South, which is the building that reminded me architecturally of Jho’s office block in Hong Kong. Essex House is where David Bowie and Igor Stravinsky lived when they were in New York, and where the singer Donny Hathaway sadly jumped to his death in 1979.
As crazy as Jho’s life was becoming, the following month he went down to Australia and decided to do one of the craziest things I’d ever heard. He rented a jumbo jet, so he could celebrate New Year in both Sydney Australia and Las Vegas on the same day. Personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse, but I suppose that was the difference of Jho being an early 30’s party animal kind of guy, and me being a late 40’s slippers and hot chocolate kind of guy.
By this time, my music industry career had gone ok. The label I co own had previously had a string of chart hits – including a 2008 UK number one off the back of Simon Cowell’s TV show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ – and we’d signed the music that was used as the title music for the multi award winning British comedy TV series ‘The Inbetweeners’.
We’d managed to get our music on Hollywood films like ‘Vanilla Sky’, ‘Serendipity’, the re-make of ‘Get Carter’; on the TV adverts for Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, and Kellogg’s; and my label co founder – Neil Claxton AKA Mint Royale – had finished a cool track called ‘Ring’ featuring Willem Dafoe that went on to be used for ESPN’s Super Bowl Promotion. [watch].
By the late autumn / fall of 2014, I was going through a difficult time personally. At the beginning of 2014, I’d had a long-term marriage break up (which was well and truly over) but my new relationship – which I was really trying to make work – had been very ‘on and off’ through the summer, which I found very difficult. I was spending more time in London, and in what seemed a relatively short period of time, I’d found out lots about Jho’s upbringing, family, and businesses.
I think we’d both been pretty good dealmakers and middlemen in our respective businesses, but obviously, he was in a totally different league to me, in terms of the size and the volume of deals he was involved in.
There’s no doubt that Jho had a lot of plates spinning back then, with names like Wynton, Jynwel, Lilestone, EMI, Anderson, Viceroy, Coastal, Electrum, PetroSaudi, Red Granite, National Geographic, Myla, and a two-word company that had the word ‘Harbour’ in it [but I can’t remember the other word] were all mentioned and talked about.
As well as his brother Szen, Jho always seemed to have a great team of loyal friends and staff around him; and although I can’t remember all their names, Catherine, Joey, Susan, Eric, Howie, Diane, Li, Riza, Tim, Debra, and Jesselynn – who I believe he’s now married to and has children with – were around or mentioned.
As well as investments in Red Granite and EMI, around the time, Jho was also trying to buy [with others] the Reebok business from the German company Adidas in a $2 billion deal; and had also been trying to buy [with others], a London hotel chain that included Claridge’s, the Savoy, the Berkeley, and the Connaught in another $1 billion deal.
Although these two deals didn’t come off for Jho, losing the hotels seemed more personal than business. The people who secured control of the hotel group were Sir Freddie and the late Sir David Barclay (known as the ‘Barclay Twins’) who already owned The Ritz, but Jho was still keen to pursue the hotel chain.
A decade earlier, I’d been involved with a company that the Barclay twins owned a stake in called ‘Monstermob’, a mobile entertainment company that floated on a sub market of the London stock exchange in 2003.
I definitely couldn’t help Jho build a relationship with the twins because I didn’t know them well enough, and hadn’t been involved with the financial arrangements about their stake in Monstermob – as I was just the music and ringtone guy – so once Jho realised the twins weren’t going to sell, he moved on to the next deal.
Things were really looking up for Jho and all his businesses. He’d just bought an oil company called Coastal; and was looking to buy a swanky London office (which he eventually bought) in a beautiful grade two listed building, which was just further down the street from his Stratton Street flat, in the up market area of Mayfair.
The property was bought for a fashion business he owned called Myla. I attended Myla’s 15th anniversary party – which was held at the new office in the autumn / fall of 2014 – but Jho didn’t attend as he needed to be at a posh black-tie engagement in New York.
If you don’t know Myla, it’s a luxury lingerie brand that was partly made famous by the ‘pearl thong’ scene in the American rom-com TV series ‘Sex and the City’, and it wasn’t my kind of party. Having models walking around in just bras, knickers, high heels and transparent negligees is definitely not my kind of thing.
To make things worse, the PA system was distorting so after a few minutes, I took the decision to go and adjust the gain to stop the distortion. I found the whole PA incident very strange, because Myla must have spent tens of thousands of pounds on that party, and to have the PA distorting, just beggars belief.
So, me, ‘Billy no mates’, ended up talking about my toddler grandson to a very nice pregnant lady; and I had a nice chat with a vivacious young woman, who was hanging around the DJ table all night, and off to do some work at the MTV Awards a few weeks later.
The highlight of the party for me though, was the appearance of a violinist acquaintance – who was there as a guest, not a performer – and her wonderful personality was like an oasis of calm in the surroundings of vanity, as most of the female guests seemed to be there to either ‘get noticed’ or ‘to out do one another’, or both.
Anyway, back to Jho. He was looking and acting like a legitimate and incredibly successful businessman and philanthropist at this time, and was being written about positively in publications like ‘Forbes’ and ‘The New York Times’.
He was involved at board level with lots of businesses and as well as EMI and Red Granite, I remember talk of lots of companies involved in the likes of real estate, hotels, resorts, retail, fashion, commodities, energy, mining, and major infrastructure projects.
I certainly didn’t expect, or suspect, that Jho would ever be accused of any financial wrongdoings, and still find it hard to believe that it’s alleged 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 made since the situation with 1MDB. Some think his 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 back in 2015, Jho was flying high, literally. He’d been ‘dating’ an Australian supermodel, who was famous through her connection to the Victoria’s Secret and H&M fashion companies. He was flying around the world in his private jet; floating around it on his three hundred feet mega yacht; and throwing plethoric lavish parties with A-list celebrities in attendance.
He was rubbing shoulders with world leaders and royalty; doing deals with governments and international investment banks; living in the most amazing homes around the world; travelling around in luxury limousines and supercars; and buying artwork by the likes of Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, and Warhol.
I feel incredibly sorry for the people of Malaysia because of the 1MDB situation and I still can’t comprehend what’s happened and find it hard to believe that Jho could be the mastermind of a masterplan to deceive people.
I always come back to wanting to believe that Jho was a pawn in a complex plan, that started out with every good intention to boost investment in Malaysia, which went catastrophically wrong, and wasn’t as much to do with him as some people now think.
Jho was never ‘just’ about business and the music and media industries. He was passionate about people, family, and humanitarian issues. He appeared to genuinely care about the problems facing the world, and things like: climate change, children’s cancer treatment, world poverty, refugee crises, wildlife, and ocean conservation, always seemed far more important to him than money.
Back when I knew Jho, there’s no doubt that he had a heartfelt adoration for the serving president of the US and his wife. He cherished a photo of the three of them that was taken at a White House party and was open about his financial support of the Democratic party’s presidential election campaign in 2012.
In April 2023, a friend of Jho’s (who’s a famous rapper, but not Busta Rhymes) was found guilty of some kind of political conspiracy. Although I don’t understand the complexities of the US legal system or the case, the problem seems to be – something along the lines – that his friend (the rapper), used Jho’s money and got other people to make political contributions – but not using their own money – but on Jho’s behalf. Maybe there’s more to the case than that, but that’s how I understand it.
Since two PetroSaudi International executives were convicted in The Swiss Federal Criminal Court in August 2024, people have asked what I knew about Jho’s links to PetroSaudi International at the time I knew him.
I really didn’t know much, other than, it was a company involved in the oil industry and one of our former UK Prime Minister’s had a firm that had contracted to them [before I met Jho]. They also had a world class and highly respected businessman as their Chairman, who is now the Chairman of NatWest (and a former Chairman of Mastercard, Centrica, Ocado and Network Rail).
More recently, I have also become aware that another former PetroSaudi director [neither of the two convicted in The Swiss Federal Criminal Courti n 2024] had to spend around 18 months in a Southeast Asia prison, despite being the 1MDB whistleblower.
In a case heard in the Malaysian High Court in February 2025, a former non-executive chairman of 1MDB said that although Jho attended a 1MDB board meeting concerning a proposed joint venture, he wasn’t aware of any role Jho had played in influencing the decisions on joint ventures, investments, or bond issues, and refuted claims that Jho had influenced the 1MDB board of directors.
This testimony has yet again left me wondering whether Jho was merely a pawn, in what’s clearly become a very complexed legal and political scandal, but only Jho knows the full truth.
There’s been considerable work done by very diligent and highly respected journalists over the past few years in relation to Jho’s life. Books have been written, documentaries made, podcasts broadcast, and there’s even a $JHOLOW investigative meme coin that’s being used to crowdsource a crypto award scheme to gather information from the public to locate him.
Although there were rumours in the press of irregularity around Jho’s involvement in 1MDB in 2015, these rumours passed me by. It wasn’t until the beginning of January 2016, that I was aware of the 1MDB situation, after an acquaintance who had retired from the music industry told me to “type Jho Low 1MDB in to google”.
Whatever Jho did or didn’t do in relation to 1MDB, at the time, he looked like a very plausible and successful businessman. In January 2016, although I’d heard of ‘1Malaysia’ (due to the concert with Busta Rhymes), I hadn’t heard of 1MDB, and wasn’t aware of a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.
Since the late summer of 2015, I haven’t seen Jho, I’ve haven’t heard from him, and his old Hong Kong direct dial number ending 29 11 rings, but is never answered.
Why this page has been written.
I’ve written this page so I can simply direct people to it, if asked about my recollections of Jho Low between 2013 and 2015. Since 2015, there’s been great intrigue, speculation, controversy, and fallout around Jho, with some people even losing their liberty. If Jho was as involved with the 1MDB situation, as some suggest, I feel saddened, shocked, and dismayed.
Other than the information on this page, I don’t have any further information to offer or add, and respectfully ask that people don’t contact me in relation to either Jho or 1MDB. Kindest regards, David Wood.
[Photo Credit: The photo at the top of the page is from Jho Low’s personal twitter / X account and taken at the 29th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at Brooklyn’s Barclays Centre on the 10th of April 2014]