The China coup on Imagination has been abandoned.

Imagination’s owners Canyon Bridge have cancelled today’s emergency board meeting at which four representatives of Beijing-controlled China Reform Holdings, Canyon Bridge’s biggest investor, were to have been appointed to the Imagination board.

It was thought that the appointments were a preliminary to re-locating Imagination to China.

Sky News reports that Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, has been told the board meeting has been cancelled.

Dowden had told the MPs who raised objections to the China Reform move that DCMS officials were “working with their counterparts in the departments for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the National Cyber Security Centre, the Foreign Office, and Cabinet Office as a matter of urgency to understand the facts”.

Dowden also said he was arranging a meeting with Ray Bingham, Imagination’s executive chairman and co-founder and partner at Canyon Bridge.

Imagination CEO Ron Black had threatened to resign if the appointments went ahead. It is now thought that he will stay on.