The Thai company JKN Global Group, owner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant, announced this Thursday that it has requested to enter into a debt restructuring process due to liquidity problems. The company, led by popular businesswoman and trans activist Jakapong Anne Jakrajutatip, said in a statement that it asked Thailand’s Central Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday to enter into a process to rearrange its operations and debt. The company asks to delay the debt payment deadline, lower its interest and sell assets to be able to settle some payments and continue its operations.
Anne Jakrajutatip, the CEO of the Thai company, was once considered the third richest trans woman in the world, according to Forbes magazine in 2020. Jakrajutatip is famous in Thailand for speaking out and established a foundation to promote transgender rights. transsexual people, called Life Inspired For Transsexual Foundation. In fact, the contest organized by the Jakrajutatip company has admitted the participation of transsexual women since 2012: the first to win a national contest was the Spanish Ángela Ponce, in 2018.
But Jakrajutatip is not the best-known owner the pageant has had. Her company, JKN Global Group, owner of several digital channels and a production company, acquired Miss Universe in October 2022 for $20 million (€18.6 million) from IMG Worldwide LLC, based in New York. It had been sold to this by former United States President Donald Trump, who was co-owner of the rights to the pageant from 1996 until the acquisition by IMG in 2015.
Trump’s sale of the pageant to IMG came after problems between the former president and the NBC network, when he made controversial comments against Mexican immigrants in 2015, even though he was a Republican candidate for the US presidency. Given these comments, NBC canceled the broadcast of the contest to choose who would be the US candidate for the next Miss Universe beauty pageant. The Univisión and Televisa networks also broke professional ties with him. Miss Universe has been held annually since 1952, broadcast in more than 160 countries. The next edition will take place, in principle, in El Salvador on November 18.
JKN Global announced last May that it had obtained revenues of 932 million bat (about 26.23 million dollars or 24.52 million euros) and a profit of 73.6 million bat (about 2 million dollars or 1, 94 million euros) in the first quarter of 2023. However, liquidity problems in recent months have caused its shares to fall on the stock market, including almost 30% this Thursday. So far this year, its shares have depreciated more than 70%.
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