Even though the father and son who run the big Singapore property company, City Developments Ltd. (CDL), seemed to have made up after a fight, things still looked tense at the company’s yearly meeting on Wednesday.
Last month, the 84-year-old chairman, Kwek Leng Beng, who is also a billionaire, said that everyone on the board of directors had agreed to move forward and forget their problems. This was after he stopped a court case he had started against his 49-year-old son, Sherman, who is the company’s main boss.
But at the meeting with the people who own the company’s shares, it was clear that the board members still didn’t all agree. Philip Yeo, who has been on the board since 2009 and is a well-known former government worker, said he was not happy about how quickly two new people, Jennifer Duong Young and Wong Su-Yen, were added to the board in February.
Yeo said, “I am very disappointed with how the two new directors were appointed.” He also said he didn’t think three other directors who helped get the new people in so fast should be voted to stay on the board.
Even though Yeo was against it, the shareholders voted to keep all five of the independent directors, including Young and Wong. They will now be part of the 11-person board at City Developments, along with the Kwek family members.
The fight between the father and son became public knowledge in late February. The older Mr. Kwek had sued his son, Sherman, to try and keep control of the property company, which is listed on the Singapore stock market. In the court papers, the father said his son had tried to take over the company by adding two new board members without the usual checks. Yeo pointed out that when new board members are chosen, “There must be agreement. It shouldn’t be just a few directors pushing things through and ignoring the chairman.”
Even though the lawsuit was dropped, the fight put a spotlight on one of the richest families in Singapore, who are worth an estimated $11.5 billion. The issue was resolved after Catherine Wu, an advisor who was in the middle of the boardroom trouble, quit her job.
Besides voting on the board members, the shareholders also agreed to let City Developments buy back up to 10% of its own shares. This is a move that is meant to help the company’s stock price, which has gone down by about 29% in the last year.
Sherman Kwek admitted that the company is facing a very difficult time and that it needs to sell some of its properties to get cash and pay off some of its debts. He also said that City Developments will think again about its earlier plans to list its commercial properties in the UK. The company had reported that its profits after tax went down by 37% to S$201 million ($153 million) in 2024, partly because it had to pay more in interest.
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