A businessman from the West Midlands and his US partner have become hundreds of millions of pounds richer overnight after their mobile phone TV business floated on the American stock market for more than $1billion.

Jonathan Kendrick, from Claverley, and business partner John Paul DeJoria, a US hairdressing tycoon, have spent four years building ROK TV from a small office in Albrighton, near Wolverhampton, into a global business with offices in Beijing, San Paolo, Moscow and Los Angeles.

Their technology allows TV to be shown on ordinary mobile phones, giving them access to millions of customers in China and India –  the two fastest-growing mobile phone markets in the world.

Today ROK TV completed a complicated share exchange deal with a US company, Cyberfund, that means the company’s 56.5million shares, valued at around 20 dollars apiece, will float on America’s OTC market. The plan is to move the shares onto the better known hi-tech stock market, the NASDAQ, in the next six months.

The deal makes the ROK TV business worth around $1.1billion, or £547million.

Mr Kendrick would not say how much the deal would net him personally but said: “This is just the value of the business on paper. The money will pay for a series of takeovers that will enable us to expand the business globally. We are currently live in eight countries.” 

But mobile phone users in the UK and Europe are unlikely to become customers, at least in the short term. “Its all down to politics,” Mr Kendrick added.