On December 10, Calvin Choi, chairman of Hong Kong–based AMTD Group, attended a fashion show at the London Stock Exchange marking the secondary listing of AMTD’s media and luxury subsidiary, The Generation Essentials Group (TGE). TGE, which owns The Art Newspaper and the iconic French fashion magazine L’Officiel, had debuted on the New York Stock Exchange six months earlier with another catwalk party. The glitzy London event, where models dressed in Vivienne Westwood posed for photographers, marked another milestone in AMTD’s rapid expansion into cultural assets.
But AMTD was parading those brands before investors in London and New York against a backdrop of lawsuits in France and Hong Kong brought by their former owners. The Jalou family, longtime owners of L’Officiel, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021, and Russian publisher Inna Bazhenova, former owner of The Art Newspaper, claim they have not received full payment for their publications.
L’Officiel was acquired for roughly $57 million, while The Art Newspaper appears to have been acquired for around $16–17 million. In TGE’s IPO filings reviewed by ARTnews, L’Officiel is valued at about $100 million, and The Art Newspaper at about $50 million.
AMTD disputes Bazhenova and the Jalou family’s claims and says it has fully paid for both acquisitions. In an email to ARTnews, Clifford Chance, the law firm representing AMTD, wrote, “We confirm that our client AMTD has duly completed the acquisition of The Art Newspaper (‘TAN’) and our client is the global owner of TAN and TAN’s intellectual properties.”
Clifford Chance did not respond to requests for comment regarding L’Officiel or the Jalou family’s claims.
Choi, a former auditor who worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citigroup, and UBS, has built AMTD by listing subsidiaries on various exchanges rather than taking the group public as a single consolidated entity. AMTD itself has never been listed in Hong Kong. In September 2023, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) imposed a two-year industry ban on Choi for failing to disclose conflicts of interest during his time at UBS, relating to conduct between 2014 and 2015.
In the years that followed, Choi and companies linked to him became embroiled in disputes involving regulators, former staff, and investors. One of the most prominent involved China Minsheng Investment Group (CMIG), an early institutional backer of AMTD, which publicly accused Choi in 2020 of misconduct related to its investment and later brought complaints to regulators and the courts. Choi denied wrongdoing, describing the dispute as a commercial disagreement.
Public accusations from CMIG, regulatory action by the SFC, and related court cases have continued to play out both legally and in the media. While Choi and his companies have consistently rejected the claims, the recurring clashes with high-profile counterparties have helped cement his reputation as one of the more controversial and polarizing figures in Hong Kong’s financial sector.
The acquisition of L’Officiel was completed in January 2022, while The Art Newspaper deal closed in October 2023. Much of the litigation now unfolding in France and Hong Kong stems from events that followed those transactions.
Shares ‘Parked and Frozen’
At the center of the dispute involving the former owner of The Art Newspaper is not the deal structure itself, but what happened afterward.
In Hong Kong court filings from late 2024, Bazhenova and her business partner, Gleb Ibragimov, said that part of the purchase price for The Art Newspaper was paid in AMTD shares. They allege that, under the deal, those shares had to be held through the designated brokerage AMTD Capital Markets, AMTD’s subsidiary brokerage division in Hong Kong. The brokerage was then renamed OoO and sold to a third party. Bazhenova and Ibragimov claim that after the change in ownership they were denied access to their accounts and that the broker refused to execute share sales even after certain lock-up periods expired, leaving part of the consideration unrealized. Court filings do not disclose the newspaper’s sale price, nor has it been publicly announced.
Bazhenova and Ibragimov asked the Hong Kong High Court for an asset preservation order to freeze part of their shares, but the court dismissed the application and awarded costs against them. A source close to the case said they are also engaged in private arbitration against AMTD in Hong Kong. Neither Bazhenova and Ibragimov, nor the law firm representing OoO, Gibson Dunn, responded to requests for comment from ARTnews.
Since the acquisitions of L’Officiel and The Art Newspaper, the legal disputes have played out alongside volatile trading in AMTD-linked companies, including TGE, which was formed as a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company—a type of shell company designed to take businesses public with fewer regulatory filings. TGE positioned L’Officiel and The Art Newspaper as core assets in its IPO filings. Recent earnings at AMTD Digital, TGE’s parent company, were boosted by significant one-off gains, and only a small number of shares in TGE have been publicly floated—i.e., made available for investors to trade. Because so few shares circulate freely, even modest buying or selling can push prices sharply up or down, intensifying swings in value. These conditions have heightened scrutiny of how TGE and its parent company report the value of their cultural assets to investors.
The Jalous’s case
In March 2025, the Jalou family filed a criminal complaint with the Paris public prosecutor’s office, alleging trademark infringement, tax fraud, and misuse of corporate assets in connection with AMTD’s acquisition of L’Officiel. The complaint was assigned to the financial investigations unit of the Paris judicial police.
The deal between the Jalou family and AMTD stipulates that AMTD acquire L’Officiel Inc. from the Jalous, which included Les Éditions Jalou (LEJ). LEJ is the magazine’s publisher and owns its trademarks, digital platform, and licenses. The Jalous argue that, like the deal for The Art Newspaper, AMTD’s purchase agreement for L’Officiel required that the family open brokerage accounts with AMTD Capital Markets to receive and trade shares. The family told ARTnews, via its Paris-based law firm Bekerman Cadeo, that it was able to sell part of its holding, realizing about $15 million, but said that more than half of the remaining shares—along with related cash proceeds—later became inaccessible.
L’Officiel, which was sold to AMTD for $57 million, was later deployed in a stock-market listing through TGE at a far higher valuation, close to $100 million according to TGE’s prospectus. Creditors, employees, and regulators have raised eyebrows at TGE’s valuation of L’Officiel at nearly $100 million. The figure comes from TGE’s own IPO filings, which pitch the brand as “new” while still relying on its full history and archives dating back to 1921.
Under SEC and UK Financial Conduct Authority rules, companies are required to disclose significant ongoing legal proceedings that could affect share price or market perception before listing. Asked whether AMTD disclosed the lawsuits in its IPO filings, the SEC and FCA declined to comment. Prospectus filings reviewed by ARTnews did not reference the legal proceedings described in France and Hong Kong. Clifford Chance did not respond to ARTnews’ questions about whether AMTD disclosed those disputes prior to listing.
Founded in 2003 with backing from CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong conglomerate linked to billionaire Li Ka-shing, AMTD initially focused on financial services. Since 2019, Choi has overseen overseas listings of AMTD-related entities, frequently using shares rather than cash to finance acquisitions.
The Jalou family said that although the 2022 transaction was publicly valued at $57 million, the effective value at closing was closer to $30 million, with payment made entirely in shares of AMTD subsidiary, AMTD IDEA Group.
“L’Officiel is not an ordinary financial asset; it is a century-old institution of French fashion,” Céline Bekerman and Antoine Cadeo told ARTnews. “Its history and the people who have shaped it cannot be handed over to predatory logic.”
The family said that when it was instructed in April 2022 to open a brokerage account, AMTD Capital Markets was controlled by AMTD Group. However, later that year it was sold and renamed OoO. Like Bazhenova and Ibragimov, the Jalou family alleges it was not informed of the sale. The Jalous said they continued dealing with staff they believed to be AMTD employees. When they later sought to transfer remaining shares and cash to a French brokerage, the family says the requests went unanswered.
Lawyers for the Jalou family allege that AMTD subsequently created offshore entities, registered new trademarks, and attempted to redirect international licensing agreements for L’Officiel. This occurred despite the magazine’s Paris-based publisher, LEJ, being under a court-approved continuation plan running until 2028 that restricts disposal of the business without judicial approval. French prosecutors confirmed receipt of the complaint to Agence France Presse (AFP) and said the investigation concerns alleged trademark infringement, tax fraud, and misuse of corporate assets.
In those filings, L’Officiel was valued at roughly €85 million ($93 million), substantially higher than the previously disclosed $57 million sale price.
Despite ongoing disputes, AMTD repackaged L’Officiel and The Art Newspaper as core assets of TGE, which went public in New York and later listed in London. In its IPO filings reviewed by ARTnews, TGE reported that it licenses the L’Officiel brand from AMTD for around $100 million and The Art Newspaper brand for about $50 million. TGE’s shares initially rose following its listings but later fell sharply, echoing volatility seen in earlier AMTD-related IPOs. In 2022, AMTD Digital briefly surged nearly 5,000 percent after listing in New York before collapsing, drawing scrutiny from investors and regulators.
Fresh legal action
On January 15, just days after ARTnews wrote to AMTD for comment, AMTD Group and its affiliated listed entities announced that they had launched new legal action against Bazhenova and Ibragimov, alleging intimidation, malicious falsehood, breach of confidence, and consequential loss. In a press release, AMTD said it had fully paid the consideration for The Art Newspaper acquisition in cash and shares and that the locked-up shares were always registered in Bazhenova and Ibragimov’s own names.
“AMTD has received various communications with the apparent intention of blackmail and harassment, and it is therefore taking legal actions, including reporting these wrongful acts to law enforcement,” Clifford Chance told ARTnews in an email in January. “You will appreciate that such matters are confidential and our client will not provide any further comment at this time.” The firm did not respond to further questions.
AMTD further alleged that in January 2026 Ibragimov sent messages indicating a willingness to disclose confidential deal information to third parties, including journalists, unless AMTD agreed to resolve matters in Bazhenova’s favor—conduct AMTD said it reported to law enforcement authorities.
Court filings reviewed by ARTnews show that while the Hong Kong High Court dismissed Bazhenova and Ibragimov’s application for an asset preservation order and awarded costs against them, it left their underlying claims for damages and other relief to be decided in a substantive action. Although the interlocutory preservation request was rejected, their civil lawsuit alleging breaches of duty and seeking compensation remains ongoing, with no public record of an appeal or final judgment to date.
