Perennial unit filing claim against Sakae's ex-director Andy Ong over property acquisition

SINGAPORE (Oct 8): Perennial Real Estate Holdings’ associate TYN Investment (TYNI) has applied to the court seeking leave to start a claim for conspiracy against Griffin Real Estate Investment Holdings (GREIH) and Singaporean entrepreneur Andy Ong Siew Kwee.

The claim filed on Monday was linked to TYN Group’s acquisition of the House of Tan Yeok Nee acquired from ERC Holdings back in 2013. The House is now held by TYNI, a wholly owned subsidiary of TYN Group, which is 50% owned by Perennial.

TYN Group has also started arbitration proceedings against ERC Holdings in connection with the acquisition.

Last November, TYNI was issued a writ of summons by GREIH, the new name for ERC Holdings, relating to the same acquisition.

Located at the junction of Penang Road and Clemenceau Avenue, the House of Tan Yeok Nee is gazetted as a national monument.

According to EdgeProp, the property was home to the Asian campus of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since 2000, following an extensive, $12 million-restoration by a Wing Tai-led consortium. The latter had purchased the property as part of the former Cockpit Hotel site in 1996 for $380 million.

In 2007, ERC Holdings, the holding company of Entrepreneur’s Resource Centre founded by Ong, had acquired the property from Union Investment Real Estate AG. Ong then sold the property to Perennial and its China joint venture partner for just under $73 million in 2013.

They then tied up with Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to set up Ming Yi Guan, which opened last year as Beijing Hospital TCM’s first facility outside China.

Last year, Ong, a former director of Sakae Holdings, was found to be in breach of his fiduciary duties to the F&B company over offences, including criminal breach of trust and cheating, involving more than $25 million.

Ong was accused of stealing $8 million in May 2012 while he was working at Sakae’s associate firm Gryphon Capital Management. The sum of money had belonged to GREIH, in which Sakae was a minority shareholder.

Sakae had alleged that GREIH's funds were used by the ERC group to finance the purchase of the House of Tan Yeok Nee as well as Big Hotel in Middle Road. The judge found Ong to be in breach of his fiduciary duties to Sakae and ordered that GREIH be liquidated.

Year to date, shares in Perennial have fallen by 14.5% to 53 cents as of 2.31pm on Tuesday.