In February 2025, City Developments executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng accused his son, group CEO Sherman Kwek, of attempting a boardroom coup by pushing through new director appointments without proper vetting. The lawsuit sent CDL shares to a two-decade low before father and son called a truce in March.
On February 26, 2025, the 84-year-old executive chairman alleged that Sherman, the group's chief executive, had acted with allied directors to push through the appointment of two new independent directors, Jennifer Duong Young and Wong Su-Yen, via a directors' resolution in writing circulated on February 7, bypassing the company's nomination committee. Kwek said the nominations committee chairman had been unaware of the nominations and had objected to bypassing a scheduled meeting. He had ordered director interviews cancelled, only for a board meeting to be called in an attempt to push the appointments through.
Kwek said he was left with no choice but to seek Sherman's dismissal as CEO on February 8, and subsequently filed court papers addressing what he called an attempted coup. In his statement he cited a litany of grievances: the S$1.9 billion loss from the disastrous investment in Chinese developer Sincere Property Group in 2020, poor UK property investments that contributed to a 94 per cent plunge in first-half 2023 profit, and the underperformance of CDL's share price since Sherman took the helm in 2018. As a father, firing my son was certainly not an easy decision, he said, but circumventing corporate governance laws was a red line.
Sherman expressed disappointment at his father's extreme actions and denied any coup attempt, saying the focus had always been on improving governance. He countered that Catherine Wu, an adviser to the board of CDL subsidiary Millennium & Copthorne Hotels with a long relationship with the elder Kwek, had been interfering in matters beyond her scope. Wu resigned her unpaid advisory role on March 5.
News of the lawsuit sent CDL shares tumbling to their lowest level in over two decades and made global headlines, denting the company's reputation. On March 12, Kwek announced on behalf of all directors that the legal action would be discontinued: he would remain executive chairman, Sherman would continue as CEO, and all directors, including the two newly appointed ones, would stay on the board, having agreed to put aside their differences for the greater good of CDL.
The truce held. At an August 2025 earnings briefing attended by both father and son, Kwek declared they had put past issues behind them, emerging stronger and more unified. CDL moved to prune its S$13 billion debt pile, agreeing in June to sell its 50.1 per cent stake in the South Beach development for S$834 million. The saga nonetheless remains a textbook case of family-business governance failure played out in full public view.