Soon after he began working in China in 2008, Taylor Price was ushered into a boardroom in the province of Hebei by a bevy of catwalk models and a man who looked identical to chairman Mao Zedong.

Mr Price was visiting the talent and modelling agency – of which the Mao impersonator was an employee – to discuss taking it public in the US through a process known as a reverse takeover. To attract potential investors, the company’s management was keen to throw in sundry other assets it owned, including a bottled water producer and a retirement home intended to be a tourist attraction in the grim, polluted heart of China’s steel country.

“The thing was a mess and there was basically no way it was going to make a viable public company so we left it alone,” says the former actuarial analyst from California.