Guo Lingming, executive chairman of Singapore's real estate giant City Developments Limited (CDL), responded to the statement made by his eldest son and President of Urban Development Group, at about 11 p.m. on Friday (February 28).

This is his third statement, without mentioning his office secretary-general Dr. Wu Guanying.

Previously, Guo Yizhi issued a statement on behalf of most directors on Thursday (27th) that the fundamental reason for the urban development dispute was caused by Wu Guanying. “The main reason for the dispute is that there is a very serious corporate governance problem within urban development, which is caused by Wu Guanying's behavior.

“The efforts to deal with this situation are of no help due to her long-term relationship with the Chairman.

“While Wu is nominally a board consultant to the Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C), a subsidiary of Urban Development, she actually intervened in matters beyond her remit and had a huge influence, which is a concern for us.”

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Guo Lingming and his son will go to court with experts: Urban development should be hired for professional management

Wu Guanying, who is originally from Taiwan, is a music doctor with a good education. In 1992, he moved to Singapore and studied with Guo Lingming. During this period, he devoted himself to early childhood education for 10 years at the beginning of the millennium. He later became the secretary-general of Guo Lingming's office and participated in the management of the group's hundreds of hotels around the world, like a smart and capable “maintainment manager”.

Guo Yizhi also said that Guo Lingming and others formed a few directors and issued court documents to five directors, including him, on the afternoon of Wednesday (26th), demanding to attend the meeting in two and a half hours, and described Guo Lingming's legal actions as a “raid”.

Guo Lingming: Maintaining corporate governance in urban development is the top priority

In his latest statement, Guo Lingming emphasized that he and a few directors resorted to court action, maintaining corporate governance for urban development is his top priority.

Guo Lingming also pointed out that Guo Yizhi's description of the two parties at the court meeting in the previous statement was misleading. He stressed that the emergence of the court documents was caused by his concern about the behavior of Guo Yizhi and his supporters, believing that they were trying to undermine the governance structure of urban development.

Guo Lingming emphasized that the result of the court's resolution was that before the court further notified, the two newly appointed independent directors were unable to perform their duties, and Guo Yizhi and others were unable to make any changes to the board committee and management of the urban development subsidiary.

“Kuo Yizhi and his supporters made these promises because they were prosecuted,” he said.