In February 2025, Singapore's corporate world watched in disbelief as 84-year-old property billionaire Kwek Leng Beng went to court against his own son. The executive chairman of City Developments Limited (CDL) accused group chief executive Sherman Kwek of attempting a boardroom coup, filing a lawsuit to remove him over what he described as serious lapses of corporate governance.
The trigger was the appointment of two new independent directors, Jennifer Duong Young and Wong Su-Yen, which the elder Kwek said had been pushed through without proper vetting by the board's nomination committee. He claimed his son's faction had twice bypassed the committee to reshape the board and its committees, calling the circumvention of governance rules a red line. As a father, firing my son was certainly not an easy decision, he said in a statement that made headlines around the world, adding that while young people may make business mistakes, sidestepping corporate governance laws was unacceptable.
Sherman, 49, who has been CEO since 2018, rejected the coup narrative. He told The Straits Times the focus of the CEO and the directors had always been on improving governance, and insisted the dispute had never been about ousting the chairman. In a separate salvo, he alleged that an adviser to the board of CDL subsidiary Millennium & Copthorne Hotels had been interfering in matters well beyond her scope, wielding outsized influence through a long relationship with his father. The directors proposed terminating her advisory agreement.
The public feud rattled investors. CDL shares tumbled to their lowest level in more than two decades as the market recoiled at a family war atop one of Singapore's most storied developers, a company carrying some S$13 billion in debt with landmark projects underway across Singapore and abroad. Commentators called it a reputational crisis for a firm long seen as a pillar of the local establishment, and a live case study in how succession disputes can destroy shareholder value.
The truce came within weeks. On March 12, 2025, Leng Beng issued a statement on behalf of all directors announcing the legal action would be discontinued: he would continue as executive chairman, Sherman would continue as group CEO, and all current directors, including the two newly appointed ones, would remain on the board. All the board members had agreed to put aside their differences for the greater good of CDL and its stakeholders, the statement read, pledging a renewed focus on strengthening the business and maximising shareholder value.
By August 2025, father and son appeared side by side at an earnings briefing, declaring they had put past issues behind them and emerged stronger and more unified. The company moved to prune its debt pile, agreeing in June to sell its 50.1 per cent stake in the South Beach mixed-use development for S$834 million to IOI Properties, controlled by Malaysian billionaire brothers Lee Yeow Chor and Lee Yeow Seng, with Sherman signalling a pipeline of more divestments to come. CDL shares have since clawed back ground, but the saga remains a cautionary tale about succession, governance and the cost of washing family linen in public.