💼 Brief Take: Singapore’s Boardroom Battle

Singapore’s property household City Developments is thrown into a family drama.

• The Kweks’ spat stunned Singapore’s corporate world as family feuds tend to be handled behind closed doors, not trashed out in the open.

• The captains of City Developments are fighting instead of navigating the ship in choppy waters.

Image source: Pixabay

Singapore’s City Developments was plunged into a crisis when its chairman Kwek Leng Beng accused his son, the developer’s chief executive officer, of attempting a boardroom coup, Bloomberg reported on 26 February.

Eveline’s Take:

🔸The Kweks’ boardroom battle – which has drawn comparisons to popular television show Succession – stunned Singapore’s corporate world as family feuds tend to be handled behind closed doors, not trashed out in the open.

🔸The younger Kwek, Sherman, spearheaded City Developments’ disastrous investment in China’s Sincere Property Group, before the “three red lines” were introduced in August 2020 to restrict the borrowings of developers. The Singapore company ended up with SGD 1.9 billion (USD 1.4 billion) of losses over the bad bet.

🔸Even before the father-son spat erupted in public, Sherman’s uncle, Kwek Leng Peck, resigned in October 2020 from his City Developments position – which he had held for more than 30 years – because of the Sincere investment.

🔸The management tussle has raised questions over who’s in charge of City Developments at a time when it has been underperforming its peers. In short, the captains are fighting instead of navigating the ship in choppy waters.