[SINGAPORE] City Developments Ltd (CDL) on Thursday (Mar 13) morning climbed at the opening, following news on Wednesday night that executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng will be discontinuing his lawsuit against his son Sherman Kwek and six other members of the CDL board.
The counter rose 4 per cent or S$0.20 to S$5.14 as at 9.05 am, after 798,500 shares were transacted.
It later eased slightly to trade at S$5.10, up 3.2 per cent or S$0.16 as at 9.51 am on Thursday.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Kwek Leng Beng said: “I will continue in my role as executive chairman and Sherman Kwek will continue as group chief executive officer.”
He added that all the current directors, including Jennifer Duong Young and Wong Su-Yen, will remain on the CDL board.
All the board members have agreed to put aside their differences for the greater good of CDL and its stakeholders, he said.
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“We will all continue to focus on strengthening CDL’s business, in accordance with good corporate governance, now and in the future, including completing the raft of landmark developments under way across Singapore and globally, furthering the expansion of various brands under Millennium & Copthorne (M&C), continuing our capital recycling initiative and, above all, maximising shareholder value.”
On Feb 26, the senior Kwek said in a statement that he filed court actions against Sherman Kwek for an attempted boardroom coup.
Kwek Leng Beng sought an injunction in his suit filed in the High Court on Feb 25 against Young and Wong to prevent them from exercising the powers of a director. Both women were appointed independent non-executive directors of CDL on Feb 7 – a move that the elder Kwek had questioned.
He also sought to overturn resolutions passed by the CDL board on Feb 21 concerning long-term adviser Dr Catherine Wu, and called for Sherman Kwek to be replaced as CEO.
In turn, Sherman Kwek pointed to Dr Wu as the “primary reason” for the dispute with his father. He claimed that she interfered in matters “going well beyond her scope” as an adviser to the board of CDL’s hotel unit M&C, and that she wielded and exercised “enormous influence” and had a long relationship with his father.
The board passed resolutions to terminate the advisory agreement that Dr Wu had with M&C, and to affirm that she had no power and authority over the directors, management and staff of both CDL and M&C.
Last week, Kwek Leng Beng issued a statement saying that Dr Wu resigned from her position as an “unpaid independent adviser”. He said that she had held the post since August 2024 and was a director on the board of M&C between June 2022 and January 2024.
