The Express was established with a mission to stop this tide of "strangulation" and the hope of securing a piece of the highly lucrative franchise of the Post.
[2] Facing saturation in the Chinese-language newspaper business and hearing of a management shake-up at the Post, the chairman of the Oriental Press Group, Ma Ching-kwan, saw an opportunity to slot a new English daily into the print capacity of their HK$200 million facility built in 1990.
[1] Chief Editor Stephen Vines insisted the paper's before-launch interaction with Michael Hanson, the head of political public relations of Governor Chris Patten, came with the intention of "hope to gain the same support from the administration as the SCMP has enjoyed in the past".
[2] It has been controversially suggested that the newspaper was established by Ma as part of a broader scheme of currying favour with the British Conservative Party and then Governor Chris Patten so as to head off narcotics trafficking allegations made against his two fugitive uncles, founders of the Oriental Press Group, one of whom was then resident in Taiwan.
[7] Having run up accumulated losses of HK$150 million,[7] and just eight weeks after a last-ditch revamp, the paper closed abruptly on 29 June 1996, throwing about 65 editorial and production staff out of work.