With extended Chinese family spread across several generations and living in four different continents, the High Court ruled legal dispute over $7.8 million generated from an Auckland subdivision should best be heard by courts in the People’s Republic of China.
In 1999, the Huang family in Guangzhou formed a business group known in English as the Heli Group. It has grown into a conglomerate with multiple investments held in the names of various Huang family members.
At issue was profits from a very profitable investment in an Auckland Silverdale subdivision by a company called Grand Silverdale Development Ltd. JieHao Huang put in funds amounting to a 3/11ths share. Grand Silverdale struck gold. Its land purchase in 2017 for $32.8 million generated a $38.4 million profit two years later. A dispute followed within Heli Group as to who was entitled to Huang’s ten million dollars profit share from Grand Silverdale.
The High Court was told that as Heli Group expanded, ‘first generation’ members gradually loosened control giving greater autonomy to ‘second generation’ members in making investment decisions. JieHao Huang is a second generation member. Heli Group’s first generation members said the Grand Silverdale investment was funded with retained business profits which would otherwise have been distributed to them as dividends. The entire ten million Grand Silverdale profit was theirs, they said. JieHao Huang said the 3/11ths Grand Silverdale investment was funded not only by Heli Group but also by other investors he had assembled. He had taken steps to return some three million dollars to first generation owners, but was withholding the rest. That money was owed other investors, he said.
Justice Campbell said this was not a dispute which could be decided in New Zealand courts. China courts better understood the context and were best placed to rule on business practices within Heli Group and the significance of multiple WeChat messages between members of the extended Huang family regarding their Grand Silverdale investment.
Huang v. Huang – High Court (29.10.21)
21.178