Jay Chou sued by business partner

15 Apr – Taiwanese singer-songwriter, Jay Chou, was recently sued by a rich businessman from Beijing for allegedly breaking their restaurant business agreement.

Asianpopnews website reported that the said businessman, who only wanted to be known as Mr. Wei, is asking for compensation of over RMB10 million from the "Initial D" actor, saying that Jay has made false promises regarding their partnership.

In 2010, the singer signed a business agreement with Mr. Wei to jointly establish a company that would develop a mainland Chinese restaurant under the name of "Mr. J" - which is also the name of Jay Chou's French-Italian restaurant in Taiwan.

However, after investing more than RMB15 million in the project that kept getting delayed, Mr. Wei later discovered that Jay did not own the exclusive rights to the "Mr. J" trademark in mainland China, as had been stated in the initial agreement.

Mr. Wei stated, "I met with Mr. Chou to discuss the issue, but he kept dragging it on and on. In the end, he just stopped contacting me, so for two years, I had to face the other stockholders on my own. Now all we can do is to ask for compensation through legal channels."

Meanwhile, Jay's manager confirmed that there had indeed been plans to collaborate, stating that the agreement had been signed between Mr. Wei and the following three stockholders and representatives of Mr. J French-Italian Restaurant - Huang Junlang, Huang Xinyu, and Zheng Xianyu. When the four of them signed the company establishment contract, Huang proposed that they sign a second agreement with Jay Chou, lyricist Vincent Fang, singer Gary Yang, and Jason Fan, which would be proof of their assistance in the expansion of the business in mainland China.

However, he said that these plans had not been able to keep up with changing circumstances and that "Jay endured the situation because of the loyalty between friends, but did not invest anything."

He added, "Right now we can only settle things through the law."