Guo Lingming issued a third statement: Deprivation of the Chairman's substantive power is essentially a “coup”

City Developments Limited (CDL) Chairman Guo Lingming issued a third statement late Friday night saying that depriving the executive chairman of its substantive power is essentially a coup.

Guo Lingming previously said in an open letter that his eldest son, the president of Urban Development, Guo Yizhi, attempted to “seize power” and bypassed the nomination committee to appoint independent directors.

In his latest statement issued late at night on Friday (February 28), Guo Lingming said that Guo Yizhi's allegations of court remarks are misleading. “We urgently filed an application because we were deeply concerned about Guo Yizhi and the directors who acted with him trying to weaken and undermine the governance structure of urban development.”

He said the fact is that after the court hearing, the two newly added independent directors were unable to exercise their powers, and the management changes of the board committee and the city development-related subsidiaries were frozen until the court ruled separately. “The reason why Guo Yizhi and the directors who acted with him made relevant commitments simply because they were prosecuted.”

Guo Lingming said that Guo Yizhi claimed that he did not try to remove him, which ignored the key point.

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He said: “It is crucial to protect good corporate governance, including the position of executive chairman, rather than my personal authority. Depriving the executive chairman of its substantive power is essentially a coup. This matter has been brought to the court and I will let the court make a ruling. Justice will eventually be revealed.”

Guo Lingming also said in a statement Friday: “Any actual or superficial disagreement within the board of directors, whether for external consultants or other matters, should be resolved within the appropriate corporate governance framework, rather than through a “coup” or written resolution of the board.”