SINGAPORE - Singapore witnessed its own version of the HBO drama Succession in February 2025, when billionaire Kwek Leng Beng, 84, took the extraordinary step of filing court papers against his own son, Sherman Kwek, accusing the City Developments chief executive of attempting a boardroom coup.
The dispute centred on the appointment of two new independent directors, Jennifer Duong Young and Wong Su-Yen, to the board of City Developments Limited, Singapore's largest listed property developer. According to the elder Kwek, the appointments were pushed through without proper vetting by the company's nomination committee, in what he described as serious lapses of corporate governance. He moved to remove Sherman as group chief executive, a position the 49-year-old had held since 2018.
In a statement that made headlines around the world, Kwek Leng Beng said that as a father, firing his son was certainly not an easy decision, but that circumventing corporate governance laws was a red line. He added that the move was necessary to deal with the attempted coup at the board level and restore corporate integrity. He proposed replacing Sherman on an interim basis with his cousin Kwek Eik Sheng.
Sherman Kwek hit back, expressing disappointment over what he called his father's extreme actions. He insisted that the focus of the CEO and the company's directors had always been on improving governance, and stressed that the legal action had not been authorised by the majority of the board. In his words, this has never been about ousting our esteemed chairman. The dispute also drew in Catherine Wu, an adviser to the board of Millennium and Copthorne Hotels, a CDL subsidiary, whom Sherman accused of wielding enormous influence beyond her scope given her long relationship with his father.
The market reacted brutally. CDL halted trading in its shares, and when trading resumed, the stock tumbled to its lowest level in over two decades, wiping out hundreds of millions in market value. Analysts warned that the public feud had damaged the company's reputation and raised serious questions about succession planning at one of Singapore's most storied family firms.
The saga drew inevitable comparisons with Succession, the television series about the fictional Roy family's battle for control of a media empire. But for Singapore's business establishment, there was nothing entertaining about it. The Kwek family controls a property empire built over generations, and the sight of father and son warring in open court rattled investor confidence across the local market.
By August 2025, the two sides had stepped back from the brink. Kwek Leng Beng withdrew the lawsuit, and father and son appeared together at an earnings briefing, declaring that they had put past issues behind them and emerged stronger and more unified. CDL moved to repair its balance sheet, agreeing in June to sell its 50.1 percent stake in the South Beach mixed-use development for S$834 million, part of a broader push to prune debt and restore investor confidence.
The truce may have ended the courtroom drama, but the episode left a lasting mark on Singapore's corporate landscape, a vivid illustration of how quickly family discord can become a governance crisis when billions of dollars and a public listing are at stake.