SINGAPORE: Dr Catherine Wu, the woman said to be at the centre of the City Developments Limited (CDL) boardroom struggle, has resigned as an independent adviser to the board of subsidiary Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Limited (MCHL).
Dr Wu had held the post since August 2024. Before that, Dr Wu had been a director on the MCHL board between June 2022 and January 2024.
In a statement, CDL’s executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng said that the MCHL board on Tuesday (Mar 4) received the “irrevocable resignation of Dr Catherine Wu as an unpaid independent advisor, with immediate effect”.
The elder Kwek’s son, Sherman, who is the group CEO of CDL, had earlier said that Dr Wu has been “interfering in matters going well beyond her scope”, adding that “she wields and exercises enormous influence”.
Mr Kwek Leng Beng said: “The CDL CEO had sought to justify his board coup and overt breaches of corporate governance with unproven insinuations about Dr Wu.
He quoted his son’s earlier statement, in which Sherman said that the “primary reason for the dispute relates to a very serious issue of corporate governance within the CDL group arising from the conduct of one Dr Catherine Wu”.
“Now that Dr Wu has resigned, the CEO and his team of directors no longer have any continuing basis to make such corporate governance allegations about CDL and to justify his Board coup,” the elder Kwek added.
“It is high time that we restore investor confidence and ensure those breaches of corporate governance committed by the CEO and his team of directors (including breaches of the SGX Listing Rules and the Code of Corporate Governance) will never happen again.”
