Jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai’s Next Digital, publisher of Apple Daily, to be delisted from Hong Kong stock exchange next week

The media company will be delisted on January 12, a year and a half after the closure of its flagship newspaper Apple Daily
Next Digital has been a key target of authorities in the wake of the adoption of the national security law in June 2020

HKEX

Mia Castagnone

Published: 1:17pm, 5 Jan 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

Next Digital, the media company founded by jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, will be delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange on January 12, a year and a half after the closure of its flagship newspaper Apple Daily.

The listing committee of the stock exchange decided last month to cancel the listing status of the company while the firm, which is now in the process of liquidation, has no intention to appeal the decision, according to a filing to the exchange released on Wednesday night.

As such, Next Digital’s last day as a listed company will be on January 11 with its shares cancelled from 9am the following day.

Next Digital has been a key target of authorities in the wake of the adoption of the national security law in June 2020. Police arrested Lai a month after the law kicked in and raided the company’s offices in Tseung Kwan O.

Apple Daily, known for its support of the 2019 anti-government protests and its backing of the opposition camp in Hong Kong, published its final edition on June 24, 2021. Authorities have also frozen HK$18 million (US$2.3 million) of Next Digital’s assets.

02:45

Jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai found guilty of fraud in office lease case

Shares of Next Digital have been halted from trading since June 17, 2021. Two months later, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po filed a petition to the Court of First Instance to liquidate the 40-year-old firm, a week after his appointed special inspector submitted his interim findings.

Chan had appointed the managing director of the accounting firm BDO, Clement Chan Kam-wing, to look into allegations of illegal activities at Next Digital.

Under Hong Kong stock exchange rules, the listing committee will scrap the listed status of a company if it has been suspended from trading for 18 months and cannot prove that it has the ability to meet the criteria to resume trading.

Apple Daily, a tabloid-style newspaper with print and digital channels, accounted for around 82 per cent of the company’s revenue. The group’s only other source of revenue was a daily newspaper in Taiwan, according to an interim report in 2021.

Lai was recently sentenced to five years and nine months in jail and fined HK$2 million (US$256,850) for breaching land lease terms in the offices of his now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper in Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate.

Hong Kong authorities are trying to block Lai from appointing a British lawyer in his national security trial set to take place in September.

The share price of Next Digital last traded at 29 HK cents. The price had fluctuated wildly in the 10 months leading to the closure of Apple Daily. The stock briefly rallied in August 2020 from 75 HK cents to HK$1.96 in a single day. The sudden surge had come after Lai was arrested for alleged “collusion with foreign forces”.

Lai first took over the company in late 1999 through a back-door listing, when it was known as Paramount Publishing Group. Paramount was renamed Next Media, before becoming Next Digital in 2015.