H&Q Asia Pacific Limited and J. H. Whitney & Co. this week joined with local Internet entrepreneur Laurie Kan in the acquisition of Hong Kong-listed Acme Landis Holdings Ltd.
The name of Acme Landis, which is a plumbing and drainage services provider, will be changed to i100 Limited.
The prominent investment banks partnered with Kan and a Hong Kong-based management team to take an 83 percent stake in the company. Kan has considerable experience in information technology with seven years as the head of Microsoft Hong Kong and stints as the director of Sina.com’s Hong Kong operation and the COO of China Internet Corp., the original incarnation of chinadotcom Corp.
According to the investors in i100, they will use their experience in the IT industry to turn the Acme Landis’ operations into Internet businesses.
However, the investors provided no specifics on what type of Internet business that the company would participate in.
Referring to its previous industry, one Internet analyst commented, “What did the company sell? Toilet products. I wonder if this is an indication of where they’ll go” for a Web business.