Hyflux founder Olivia Lum and five former directors faced a 54-day criminal trial over allegations they failed to disclose material information about the Tuaspring water-and-power project to the Singapore Exchange, with prosecutors closing their case in late September 2026. The trial is the culmination of Singapore's most devastating retail investor disaster, which left about 34,000 investors nursing losses of roughly S$900 million.
Hyflux, founded by Lum in 1989, was once the pride of Singapore's water industry. Its downfall centred on Tuaspring, an integrated water and power plant for which it won a national tender. Prosecutors alleged that in Hyflux's March 2011 announcement of the project win and in the offer information statement for S$200 million of 6 per cent preference shares in April 2011, Lum and the company failed to disclose that Tuaspring marked an expansion into the new business of selling electricity, and that the plant's profitability depended heavily on electricity sales revenue exposed to volatile power prices. National water agency PUB had committed to buying only desalinated water, not electricity, under the long-term agreement, a risk profile bank lenders said differed sharply from a typical integrated water and power plant.
When electricity prices collapsed, Tuaspring bled cash. Hyflux filed for court protection in 2018, and the company was eventually wound up, wiping out retail investors who had bought its preference shares and perpetual securities on the promise of steady 6 per cent payouts. A proposed rescue by Indonesian consortium Salim-Medco fell through in 2019.
Lum, former chief financial officer Cho Wee Peng and four former independent directors were charged in November 2022. Lum faces charges of consenting to the intentional failure to disclose information required under SGX listing rules, punishable by up to seven years' jail and a S$250,000 fine, plus charges over the 2011 offer documents carrying up to two years' jail. One independent director, Rajsekar Kuppuswami Mitta, pleaded guilty on 7 August 2025 to a charge of neglect over the March 2011 SGX announcement.
During the trial, the prosecution called 22 witnesses, including bankers from SMBC, DBS and Mizuho who testified about their understanding of Tuaspring's risks. The defendants were to indicate whether they would argue there was no case to answer.
Whatever the verdict, the Hyflux saga has already reshaped Singapore's markets: it triggered a reckoning over the sale of complex investment products to retail investors and stands as a warning about disclosure failures at the top of celebrated companies.