SINCE its formation in 1967 by movie magnate Sir Run Run Shaw and the Lee family of Hysan Development, among others, Television Broadcasts (TVB) has grown steadily from a mainly television station to a conglomerate of entertainment and leisure businesses.
In preparation for the 1984 public flotation it restructured its operations and made TVB, which held the television broadcast licence, a wholly owned subsidiary of a new holding company, HK-TVB.
However, its increasingly complicated corporate structure and diversified interests, coupled with its near total monopoly on television viewing in Hongkong, prompted the Government to reassess its supervision of the television industry.
This resulted in the 1988 amendment of the television ordinance which required HK-TVB to reorganise its corporate structure in order to renew TVB's licence in December that year.
TVB and several other subsidiaries involved in programme licensing and animation production were thus spun off for a separate public listing.
The remaining part of HK-TVB was later renamed TVE (Holdings).