International Man of Mystery Low Taek Jho, who parties with Hollywood celebrities and is now Malaysia’s most famous socialite, has aroused so much worldwide curiosity that there has been a lot of online searches about him.  He recently granted an exclusive interview to The Star, the leading English daily in Malaysia, to shed some light into his background, his life, his career and a whole range of other points.

The Star...The People's Paper

Jho Low, aged 28, was born in Penang where he lived till he was 16. At 16, his parents sent him to Harrow School in England. He is the third and youngest child in the family of Datuk Larry Low, the founder of the engineering company MWE. He can speak English, Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, Hokkien, Teo Chew and Basic Arabic.

Low attributed his success to being in the right place at the right time and going to the right schools – Harrow School in England (A-Levels) and The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, in the United States (Bachelor of Science in Economics majoring in Finance). Harrow had lots of children of prominent European, Asian and Middle Eastern families, enabling him to build the core foundation of contacts for the future. At Wharton, he expanded his network , further cementing his relationships with Arab royalty and well-connected Middle East friends especially those from Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.

Harrow School

Wharton School of Business

Jho Low made his first million – in US dollars – when he was barely 20 years old when he took a semester off from The Wharton School of Business to set up an investment fund called The Wynton Group with US$25mil from family and nine South-East Asian and Middle Eastern friends. The company started out by dealing mainly in portfolio investments around the world. It later moved from just buying and selling public shares to private equity. The company, in which he owns a stake, now has offices in Malaysia, Singapore and headquarters in British Virgin Island and is now worth in excess of US$1bil.

Wynton is planning to launch a new US$1 billion real estate and hospitality fund sometime in October, mainly for investing in real estate, hotels and hospitality projects around the world.

A US$250 million entertainment fund is also in the pipeline because Wynton believes there is some synergy between real estate and entertainment. This fund covers the whole spectrum from fashion to movies and so forth. Shooting Hollywood movies in Malaysia is a vital part of Jho Low’s plans to help attract investments to the country. He has been trying to convince his Hollywood friends like Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Leonardo di Caprio to use Malaysia as a location for movies.

The third fund will be a US$250 million general fund.

All these fund sizes are the initial first phase equity commitment that the company is securing which means that actual fund sizes and purchasing power could be much larger. An equity of US$1 billion could have a potential purchasing power in excess of US$2 billion or more after leverage. The new headquarters will be a 20,000sq ft office in Sowwah Island in Abu Dhabi.

An impression of Sowwah Island

Jho Low was appointed to the board of UBG Bhd as group adviser and non-independent & non-executive director in 2008. He is also group adviser to several international corporations involved in global private equity, M&A and buyouts.

He lives a globe-trotting life covering Los Angeles, New York, London, St Tropez, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur. He parties with Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, Jamie Foxx, Lindsay Lohan and Usher but claims that news reports about the parties are exaggerated. His Arab childhood friends and investors are actually the spenders, not him. He is the person who calls to make the reservations on behalf of his Arab friends and investors.  His name is thus all over the place, putting him under the global spotlight.

On that particular occasion when the New York Post ran the article about him and his lavish spending, it was in reference to a party that was thrown for a friend’s engagement. He was just helping to coordinate the party arrangements as usual. Even his lavish 28^th birthday party in Las Vegas was a surprise party thrown by a group of his close friends.

He is not going out with Paris Hilton but they have been to several parties together because he is a friend of her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton. Things had been blown out of proportions by the media according to Jho Low.

Low vehemently dismissed talk that he was “wasting a lot of money partying”.

“For me, we all work very hard. Of course, we have a disadvantage where at our age, people may perceive it differently. At the end of the day, I handle the investors’ money prudently. I generate returns for them.

“I am not an excessive person. Excessiveness with alcohol is just not me.”

On the home front, Jho Low dispelled talk that he is involved in the controversial redevelopment of the TUDM Sungai Besi airbase. He denied the allegations that he had received a RM500 million contract for the project. He stressed that he has no involvement whatsoever.

Jho Low thinks Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had great vision when he was Prime Minister with big spending in Malaysian infrastructure which resulted in Malaysian-based construction companies becoming leaders in the global construction arena. Many Malaysian companies are now doing sophisticated construction work in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and all over the Middle East.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

He talked about his superstar friend – Usher – who wants to help him start a charity programme for children here to learn the business part of the entertainment industry. He has known Usher for a long time. He met Usher in New York when he was working with Usher on Usher’s New Look Foundation, a charity assisting children who want careers in the business side of the entertainment industry. He mentored these kids, advising them on writing business plans.

Usher

Usher's New Look Foundation

With this interview by The Star, we get a glimpse into the life of this international man of mystery and Jho Low achieved his objective of de-mystifying himself. No more “Jho Who?”. He is Low, Jho Low….licensed to kill invest your money.  May the force be with Jho!

The Malaysian press and the local internet scene were reverberating with intense curiousity over the identity of the young Malaysian millionaire friend of Paris Hilton, a mystery man by the name of Low Taek Jho.

Paris Hilton participated in a mini photo shoot on a boat in Paris  on July 15 2010. She adorned a bright pink dress with a large diamond snake bracelet, tights and high heels as she posed on the water with the Eiffel Tower in the background. She was spending the day on the boat with her sister Nicky Hilton and Malaysian millionaire Low Taek Jho.

Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton

Low has been spending very lavishly at clubs around the world and is rumoured to be an adviser to some international corporations involved in oil, gas and construction and is on the board of Malaysian bank UBG Berhad.  His name has been linked to the controversial redevelopment of the military airport in Sungei Besi in Kuala Lumpur.

Low Taek Jho

Low is a baby-faced 28-year old Wharton graduate who loves Cristal. Tales of his largess are swirling about and frequently as he has been dropping tens of thousands of dollars at hot spots around the world.

He celebrated his 28^th birthday with a four-day bash at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Megan Fox was flown out to Vegas to hang out with the birthday boy. The hotel pool was surrounded by caged lions and tigers and filled with girls in bikinis. Later, at a nightclub, Low bought 120 bottles of Cristal for the revelers. It was said that Jamie Foxx gave him a red sports car as a present and Paris Hilton and Usher also attended the party.

Caesars Palace Las Vegas

Low with Usher

New York Post ran the following article on Low on 8^th November 2009 which offered insights into the lifestyle of the rich and wealthy! Here is the said article:

A fleet of black Cadillac Escalades hums outside Chelsea hot spot Avenue — the A-list watering hole of such celebrities as Justin Timberlake and Lindsay Lohan.

A black Cadillac Escalade

As the car doors open, a dozen men emerge and a bouncer whisks them over the club’s threshold, past a group of shivering models behind the velvet rope.

“Who is it?” one of them wonders out loud. “Is it P. Diddy?”

But the man at the center of the entourage isn’t a celebrity. He isn’t even a mogul. He’s Taek Jho Low, a 20-something Wharton grad from Malaysia who has burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars at the city’s hottest nightspots in the last three months — and shows no signs of stopping.

The nightlife scene is abuzz with tales of this international man of mystery — who goes by the name Jho Low and whose chubby, bespectacled appearance hardly meets the image of a wealthy gadabout.

In September, during Fashion Week, sources said, Low helped rack up a $160,000 bar tab at Avenue, including several $900 bottles of Cristal champagne.

Cristal champagne

One month later, Lindsay Lohan was belatedly celebrating her 23rd birthday at downtown drinking den 1OAK when 23 bottles of Cristal suddenly appeared. They were reportedly paid for by a “mystery Malaysian,” who, sources claim, was Low.

At chic 27th Street hangout Pink Elephant, Low routinely spends $50,000 to $60,000, according to the club’s owner, David Sarner. One night, at the Pink Elephant outpost in Southampton, Low enjoyed himself so much that he kept the revelry going — all the way to Malaysia, Sarner said. “He ended up flying eight of our waitresses to Malaysia for a party,” he added.

Waitresses

Strangely, for a man attracting so much attention, very little is known about Low. According to his official biography, he currently serves as a group adviser of several international corporations and was appointed to the board of UBG Berhad, a financial-services group in Kuala Lumpur, last year. But when The Post interviewed Malaysian experts at such think tank as the Council on Foreign Relations, no one had ever heard of Low.

According to inside sources, Low lives at a $100,000-a-month apartment in the Park Imperial, on West 56th Street, home to James Bond actor Daniel Craig and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs — and he won’t go anywhere, not even on the elevator, without at least one bodyguard.

Park Imperial

Some of Low’s entourage of eight to 12 people also reside in two other apartments at the Park Imperial — a $30,000-a-month pad and a 2,200-square-foot loft with Central Park views that costs $20,000 a month, according to real-estate investor Michael Hirtenstein, who used to live in the latter.

By now, all of you would have watched the MJ Memorial or caught glimpses of it from the tv. I stayed up to watch it live early this morning. My time zone is GMT +8 so it was early Wednesday morning here when the memorial started.

What a memorial it was! There were great performances from Mariah Carey, Usher, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Ritchie, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer and Shaheen Jafargholi (“Britain’s Got Talent” star). I find Usher’s performance particularly touching when he sang “Gone Too Soon”.

MJ’s brother Marion also tugged at my heartstrings with his speech. He alluded to the controversies that surround MJ in death. “How much pain can one man take?” Marion asked. “Maybe now, they will leave you alone.”  How poignant!

To me, the most memorable part of the memorial was at the very end when MJ’s daughter Paris Katherine Jackson took to the microphone and said, “Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just want to say that I love him so much.”  She broke down in tears after that and buried herself in the arms of her aunt Janet Jackson. I don’t mind admitting that tears just welled up in my eyes after that.  She touched the hearts of millions worldwide with that short tearful tribute. RIP, MJ!

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