The internal woes of City Developments Ltd (城市發展), Singapore’s second-largest listed developer, continued to escalate after a second board member on Tuesday resigned over disagreements on an investment in China.
Koh Thiam Hock (許添福) stepped down from his position as an independent non-executive director at the firm, a Singapore Exchange filing said.
While the company did not specify the reasons for his departure, it said that Koh quit from his post after sharing his “observations, concerns and suggestions” about the firm’s investment in Chinese developer Sincere Property Group (協信遠創).
He is the second board member to quit after Kwek Leng Peck (郭令柏), a second-generation scion of the family that controls City Developments, departed in October over similar disagreements.
At stake is the unity of a US$16.5 billion family dynasty, according to this year’s Bloomberg Billionaires Index list of Asia’s richest clans.
The resignations could become a distraction amid the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company’s operations.
City Developments appointed a new board director, Carol Fong (馮瑞亮), group chief executive of CGS-CIMB Securities International Pte Ltd (銀河-聯昌證券).
It also tweaked the board composition and appointed new members to some board committees.
A developer of residential, retail, office and hotel properties, Sincere agreed to let City Developments take a joint controlling interest of about 51 percent for S$880 million (US$664 million).
The move expanded City Developments’ presence in China to 20 cities from three, lifting the proportion of its portfolio allocation there to 15 percent from 9 percent.
Koh was appointed to the position in 2016. He had decades of experience in Bank of America’s operations in Singapore, where he dealt with a broad range of functions from compliance to finance.
City Developments shares rose 0.25 percent to S$8.05 in Singapore as of 11:04am yesterday.
The FTSE Straits Times Financials Index remained largely flat.
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