Sir Dickson Poon was knighted in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to business and charity, especially higher education.
Along with Sammo Hung, Poon founded D&B Films Co., Ltd which released action and martial arts motion pictures such as the In the Line of Duty series, Hong Kong 1941, Legacy of Rage and some more than 50 other titles. The company's last production, "Black Cat II: Assassination of President Yeltsin" (Hei mao zhi ci sha Ye Li Qin), was in 1992.
Poon was once married to Marjorie Yang, daughter of Hong Kong textile magnate Y.L. Yang (Yang Yuan-loong), and chair person of the Esquel Group, a cotton shirt-maker founded by her father in 1978.
In 1984, Poon's company signed the then-21-year-old Miss Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh, to appear in a television ad opposite Jackie Chan. That appearance, with Poon's help, subsequently helped to launch Yeoh's motion picture career with the 1985 martial arts film Yes, Madam. Four years later, in February 1988, Yeoh suspended her movie career to marry Poon; then resumed it three-and-a-half years later when the couple divorced in mid-1991.
In November 2010 Poon donated GB£10 million to St Hugh's College, Oxford for the construction of the Dickson Poon China Centre, which will bring together, for the first time, academics from a range of research interests related to China, provide accommodation for the college's postgraduate students, and house the Chinese Collection of the Bodleian Library.
Sir Dickson Poon was knighted in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to Business and charity, especially higher education.
