John Tan Honjian, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Mr. Tan brings extensive experience as a corporate strategist and private equity investor who brings significant legal experience with local and cross-border corporate mergers and acquisitions, corporate joint ventures and strategic alliances, foreign investment, private equity and venture capital deals, private fund establishment and structuring for private equity fund and venture capital funds, project financing, structuring of investment deals for high net-worth family offices, strategic structuring of business deals, and property transactions for both corporate and individual clients.

Since January 2015, Mr. Tan has served as Chairman and CEO of AEI Capital Group located in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Shenzhen, where he lead the Asia-Pacific-focused private equity investment group with AUM exceeding USD $500 million with the support of a seasoned team backed by diverse experience in more than 100 M&A transactions, exceeding 50 private equity deals and above 20 IPO exercises in major financial centers such as New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.  AEI Capital Group specializes in late-stage, pre-IPO investments, merger and acquisition/joint venture transactions, private equity/venture capital deals, private investment in public equity (PIPE), hedge fund portfolio, private fund structuring, and buy-out of high growth small and medium-sized enterprises and tech ventures, with preferred exit via IPO on global stock exchanges such as HKEX, ASX and NASDAQ.  AEI Capital Group received the award of Best Private Equity Firm (East Asia) in Fund Awards 2021 granted by Wealth & Finance International (WFI).

Since January 2016, Mr. Tan has served as a Partner with Ng, Gan and Partners in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and has served as President of AEI Tech Venture Group where he provides board-level guidance to this tech venture builder with an in-house early-stage investment arm that co-builds digital business units of established mid-sized pre-IPO companies under AEI Capital’s investment portfolio.

Since January 2017, Mr. Tan has served as President for Ashita Group in Malaysia where he chairs the  Strategic Planning Committee on the Board of this corporate group exceeding billion-dollar annual turnover and provides board-level guidance and leadership for the capitalization, strategization and digitization while catalyzing the Ashita Group’s tremendous topline growth by 400% within 5 years to get very close to the milestone of second billion-turnover soon, steering valuation of the Group to jump by 1600% within 5 years in private markets. Mr. Tan joined the Board after AEI Capital became the largest institutional investor in Ashita Group.

Since January 2020, Mr. Tan has served as co-President, Investment Banking Services Group at European Credit Investment Bank Ltd. where he leads its offshore investment banking services group to serve small-mid cap listed companies across Asia Pacific whose capital market needs are still mostly underserved by onshore investment banks and global institutional investors.  Mr. Tan has served on the board of directors of various high growth companies across Asia Pacific and acted as the Board advisor to various public listed companies across Asia Pacific.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Tan specialized in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and private equity as a common law-qualified cross-border corporate lawyer at Rajah and Tann Singapore LLP, the largest law firm in ASEAN, headquartered in Singapore, with affiliate offices in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, and founded in 1976.  Mr. Tan also served as the regional counsel for a Fortune 100 Company in charge of the ASEAN and South Asia regions. Mr. Tan has received the honor of Global Innovator Award 2018 in Finance and Investment Category by Global SME Alliance, United Nations due to his significant contribution on ASEAN-plus-China One-Belt-One-Road private equity investment thesis. Mr. Tan spoke as a Panel Speaker in Global SME Summit alongside with global leaders such as France ex-Prime Minister Mr. Jean-Pierre Raffarin and China ex-Vice Premier Mdm. Wu Gui Xian.  Mr. Tan completed his Master of Business Administration (MBA) Essentials Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), with Executive Program completed at University of Oxford on Blockchain Strategy. He also completed his Postgrad Executive Programme in Alternative Investments at Harvard University.