The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stephens Finance Ltd..md

aliases	category	tags	summary	start	location	relations	created	updated
Stephens Finance	Private Organization	Organization Lippo Stephens HongKong Banking	Hong Kong finance company established in 1978 by the Riady family's Lippo Group and the Stephens brothers of Arkansas, where John Huang worked before joining Worthen Bank.	1978	Hong Kong	type with reverse start fn founded Mochtar Riady true 1978 1 type with reverse start fn founded Jackson Stephens true 1978 1 type with reverse role fn employed_by John Huang true executive vice president 1 type with reverse fn employed_by James Riady true 1	2026-09-23	2026-09-23

Stephens Finance Ltd. was a Hong Kong finance company established in 1978 by Mochtar Riady of the Lippo Group and the Arkansas financiers Jackson and Witt Stephens. According to a 1998 report of the United States House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Mochtar Riady had first met the Stephens brothers in 1976, when he was "looking into buying Bert Lance's share of the National Bank of Georgia"; that deal fell through, and the friendship produced Stephens Finance two years later and "several other joint projects before Lippo and Stephens acquired a substantial stake in Worthen Bank of Arkansas in 1983."¹

John Huang was executive vice president at Stephens Finance under James Riady before moving to Little Rock, Arkansas as vice president for the Far East at the Worthen Bank, and was later appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy in the International Trade Administration of the United States Department of Commerce.¹ The committee's account of these ventures rested chiefly on depositions of James Riady in Stephens Group, Inc. v. United States (1993), of the Little Rock lawyer C. Joseph Giroir (1997), and of Arthur Vernon Weaver (1997). The Riadys later traded their interest in Worthen for the Stephens family's interest in the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, and traded their interests in other joint ventures.¹

The National Bank of Georgia that Riady had considered buying from Bert Lance was sold instead, at a closing in January 1978, to Ghaith R. Pharaon; the Federal Reserve Board concluded in 1991, according to the BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report, that Pharaon had borrowed at least part of the purchase money, "with Bank of Credit and Commerce International as his partner in the transaction from the beginning."²³

Footnotes

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1. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law: Interim Report. House Report 105-829, 105th Congress, 2nd Session, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ↩︎

2. Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate. December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm ↩︎

3. Kerry and Brown, The BCCI Affair, ch. 16, "BCCI and Georgia Politicians." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm ↩︎