Adrian Cheng Named Co-chairman of China’s Meta Media
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SHANGHAI — Hong Kong entrepreneur Adrian Cheng has been appointed co-chairman of Meta Media Holdings Ltd., the Chinese fashion media corporation formerly known as Modern Media.
Investors smiled on the appointment, sending Meta Media stock up 79 percent to close at 1.13 Hong Kong dollars, or $0.14, on Friday.
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Cheng is the chief executive officer of New World Development and founder of K11 Group, the retail operator behind K11 Art Mall, known for initiating the “museum-retail” concept.
“Cheng’s visionary approach and thinking toward retail, art, media, design and fashion will fast-track Meta Media’s business expansion and international reputation,” New World Development wrote in a statement.
Cheng said a “shared vision” prompted him to join Meta Media. “We must constantly seek the ideal relationship between culture, art and business. This will be vital for our future to ensure we authentically communicate, resonate and engage with all our audiences,” he added.
“Adrian is a retail visionary and business leader who constantly reimagines how commerce, community, art and innovation can intersect and positively impact societies,” said Thomas Shao, chair, founder and CEO of Meta Media.
Founded in 1993, the Hong Kong-listed Meta Media is the owner of the weekly general interest magazine Modern Weekly, Lohas, Arbiter Life Magazine and Nowness, the creative video platform formerly owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The company is also the publisher of the Chinese version of Instyle, Bloomberg Businessweek, Numéro, Ideat, The Art Newspaper, ArtReview and ArtReview Asia.
The media group played an instrumental role in creating a link between China’s contemporary art scene and the fashion world.
As one of China’s largest fashion and luxury media corporations, the company was renamed Meta Media in early 2022 to transform the company into a “virtual reality-oriented hypermedia form,” the group said at the time.
The company’s first metaverse venture was the virtual reality platform Meta City, created in partnership with Baidu last July.
This Monday, Meta Media became a strategic partner of Baidu’s Ernie Bot, a ChatGPT-like project set to launch next month.
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