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Inside the Explosive Feud That Rocked Singapore’s Richest Family
2025/4/15
Big Take Asia
C
Cheryl Lee
D
Dexter Lo
K
K. Oanh Ha
Cheryl Lee: 新加坡郭氏家族企业City Developments表面上看起来是家族企业成功的典范，但实际上，家族内部长期存在紧张关系。最近，家族族长郭令明起诉其子郭明忠，指控其未经同意任命新董事，试图进行董事会政变。虽然诉讼最终撤回，但这暴露了公司内部深层次的问题，也对投资者造成了冲击。这起事件表明，即使是看似顺利的权力交接，也可能隐藏着长期的家族矛盾，对企业发展和投资者利益构成潜在风险。亚洲许多经济体都依赖于多代家族企业，郭氏家族的纠纷突显了家族企业继承计划的复杂性和潜在的混乱性，投资者需要更加谨慎地评估家族企业投资的风险。
Cheryl Lee: 郭氏家族的纠纷涉及多位关键人物：郭令明（84岁，CDL执行主席），郭明忠（49岁，CDL首席执行官），以及郭令明的长期助手吴凯瑟琳。郭明忠主导的一项巨额投资失败，导致CDL亏损，加剧了家族内部矛盾。吴凯瑟琳在公司事务中的角色不明确，也引发了争议。郭令明起诉郭明忠后，最终撤诉，并宣布吴凯瑟琳辞职，父子二人将继续领导CDL，试图恢复投资者信心。
Cheryl Lee: 郭氏家族发迹于新加坡，其财富主要源于City Developments Limited (CDL) 的房地产开发业务。CDL的业务遍及全球，拥有众多酒店和商业地产。郭令明是一位精明的商人，其强硬的管理风格对其子郭明忠产生了深远影响。郭明忠努力工作，希望证明自己的能力，但其投资失误导致CDL市值大幅下降。
Dexter Lo: 郭氏家族的纠纷并非个例，它反映了亚洲许多大型家族企业在财富传承方面面临的普遍挑战。许多亚洲家族企业在权力交接过程中面临诸多问题，例如老一代仍然试图掌控大权，限制了年轻一代的发挥空间；家族成员对企业发展方向和财富分配存在分歧；以及当今世界与父辈成长时相比发生了巨大变化，竞争更加激烈。“富不过三代”的现象在亚洲和西方都存在，家族企业在财富传承方面面临挑战。郭氏家族的纠纷对其他亚洲家族企业来说是一个警示，投资者需要更加关注家族内部矛盾对企业的影响。亚洲家族企业在权力交接时，需要更加谨慎地制定继承计划，并妥善处理家族内部矛盾，以维护企业稳定和投资者利益。
supporting_evidences
Cheryl Lee: 'So basically what happened was that in February, two new directors were appointed to City Development's board without consent from Lingbing and a few other directors.'
Cheryl Lee: 'Lingbing wasn't happy. He claimed Sherman had bypassed the proper committee to appoint those new directors. So he accused Sherman of attempting a boardroom coup, and he filed a lawsuit against Sherman and some of the other directors. The fight was quickly diffused with Elder Quek dropping the case. But the lawsuit has exposed key issues at the core of the multibillion-dollar family-run business.'
Cheryl Lee: 'This came as a shock to everyone because everyone on the outside had thought that the transition had already happened smoothly. And this, what it shows is that there were these long simmering tensions for many years. Now it has all spilled over into accusations of business incompetence, a boardroom coup and an outsider's influence. All that is potential risk to investors.'
Cheryl Lee: 'And the Quek dispute has highlighted just how messy succession plans can get.'
Cheryl Lee: 'So investors are looking at this case and wondering whether they have properly priced in the risks when they look at family-run businesses and their stocks. And we know that as many of these Asian patriarchs age and look to pass down their businesses to the next generation of heirs, this is going to be an increasingly hot issue that investors need to take note of and be aware of.'
K. Oanh Ha: 'The Kwik family traces its roots back to China. Its original patriarch, Kwik Hong Pung, immigrated to Singapore from Fujian province and founded his trading business in 1941. But it wasn't until the 90s that the Kwik family's fortune skyrocketed, thanks in part to a property developer that they'd acquired earlier, City Developments Limited, or CDL.'
Cheryl Lee: 'Sure, yeah. Firstly, there's Ling Bing. He's the second-gen business owner of CDL. He's 84 now. He's the current patriarch of the family and he's the executive chairman at the firm.'
Cheryl Lee: 'And based on Ling Bing's official biography, he was very much influenced by his father who taught him a lot about business but who was also a very tough boss. So his dad would scold him harshly and Ling Bing said that he actually learned a lot through hardship. Under his dad. Yeah, exactly. Typical Asian father.'
Cheryl Lee: 'Leng Bing also has a reputation for being a savvy businessman. In 1995, he famously bought a hotel owned by Donald Trump in a deal that rocked the business world. Trump was undergoing bankruptcy proceedings at that time. And basically, Leng Bing rejected a request by Trump to keep control of the iconic Plaza Hotel in New York City.'
Cheryl Lee: 'So in the end, what happened was that City Developments and a Saudi prince bought the iconic property for $83 million less than what Trump had paid for it. Wow, so he's a very good businessman, Ling Bing. He is very visionary, keen on striking great deals, a tough boss with high standards for everyone, including himself. Ling Bing's tough management style left a strong impact on his own son, the other key player in the story, Sherman Quick.'
Cheryl Lee: 'He is 49, he's the eldest son of Ling Bing, and he is a hardworking person. He has always wanted to prove himself as a capable CEO to his staff, to investors, and his own dad. Sherman became the chief executive of CDL in 2018, after years of working in the family business.'
Cheryl Lee: 'Sherman is the one who spearheaded this $1.9 billion dollar investment into Sincere Property Group. That was the China investment that turned out to be disastrous. It totally blew up. So what happened after was that Sincere ran into liquidity problems and CDL had to sell its stake for a nominal $1. So it was a total loss.'
Cheryl Lee: 'CDL has now lost 70% of its market value, or more than $8 billion since its shares peaked close to 18 years ago. Much of that decline has taken place since Sherman became CEO, although high interest rates, COVID, and government curbs have hit Singapore's property sector more broadly too. The losses caused a rift in the family.'
Cheryl Lee: 'One other really important character in this story is Catherine Wu. So Catherine Wu, she met Quek Lingbing in Taiwan in 1992. She is a musical person, a singer, and she calls Lingbing her benefactor and her boss. And she moved to Singapore to be his mentee.'
Cheryl Lee: 'Over the next 30 years, she accompanied him to hotel inspections and hotel meetings in Singapore and even in other countries. And she has been very involved in the business and contributed a lot. The tricky part is that when she issues instructions, no one is quite clear whether she did it or she is a proxy for the chairman.'
Cheryl Lee: 'This irked Sherman, the younger Quek. He blamed Wu for causing the family dispute and accused her of meddling in business affairs beyond her scope. Things got so tense that at one point, father and son stopped speaking directly to each other. After Lingbing filed the lawsuit in February, accusing his CEO son of attempting a boardroom coup, Sherman responded that he wasn't trying to oust his father and pointed at Wu for being the source of the conflict.'
Cheryl Lee: 'But the very public feud ended almost as abruptly as it had started. On March 4th, just about a month after the lawsuit was filed, Lingbing released a statement saying Wu had irrevocably resigned from her role as an unpaid advisor. And he dropped the case about a week after, saying he and Sherman would keep their roles at CDL's helm and investors' confidence needs to be restored.'
Dexter Lo: 'So I think the struggles that you are seeing right now with the Queks is not something that's unfamiliar to quite a lot of large, wealthy Asian families or even around the world.'
Dexter Lo: 'There's a Chinese saying in Asia called 富不过三代. And basically, if you directly translate it, it means wealth does not survive past the third generation. And for a lot of families, it's almost like a curse. And it's been documented both in Asia, but as well in the West, that wealth doesn't typically tend to go beyond the third generation or it tends to start declining over time.'
Dexter Lo: 'And one reason for that, which Quik himself had talked about in the past, is that families sort of disagree each other on how to bring the business forward and how to distribute the wealth, so to speak. And that can lead to feuds like this one.'
Dexter Lo: 'So in these multi-generation family businesses, the problems often surface when it's time for the old guard to hand over the reins of the business to the next generation, right? Yeah. So one of the major challenges that you have essentially in these kind of family businesses is that the patriarch basically still wants to run the show. It leaves limited room for the scion to navigate, in a sense. And that can lead to all sorts of problems.'
Dexter Lo: 'And another challenge, of course, is that the world has changed quite radically from when their fathers or their mothers were growing up. So, for example, there's much more competition now.'
Dexter Lo: 'According to one McKinsey report, 85% of Asia's businesses are family-run. Many of the biggest names in the region, from Samsung to Toyota, are run by multi-generational families. And that makes the region especially vulnerable to the dramas of family dynamics bleeding into the boardroom.'
Dexter Lo: 'It's generally the case that in Asia, families dominate businesses, even more so than in the West where it's much more institutionally run or much more controlled by, say, activist investors. And that's why for a lot of investors and people looking to invest in this region, it's definitely a case where you have to kind of take note of all these family feuds and where they're going. And as we have seen with the case of city developments, these issues can definitely affect how the stock performs.'
Dexter Lo: 'I think it's definitely a warning sign to a lot of families in Singapore, but also the white region. We have seen in the case of Hong Kong, for example, where you have very public and very bitter intergenerational feuds, which can lead to huge splinters in the family. And it's the same case in Singapore. And there's obviously the additional complexity because a lot of these firms are listed. And it's not just the family that wants to have a say in the future of these companies, but other shareholders as well.'
Dexter Lo: 'I think this issue is being closely watched by a lot of firms because we are at the stage where a lot of firms, especially real estate firms, controls a huge sizable part of Singapore economy as well. So the fact that a succession plan that is so well laid out and so well telegraphed can go so badly wrong. It's probably quite worrying to not just shareholders and investors in this market, but also to all these various families that are very closely planning and thinking about what's next for these firms as a lot of these patriarchs age and start thinking about handing off the reins to a younger generation.'
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