Wife of Lafe chairman seeks to buy Emerald units

[reporter2]

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/comp...-emerald-units

Wife of Lafe chairman seeks to buy Emerald units

By Malminderjit Singh

[email protected]@MalminderjitBT

20 Nov


LAFE Corporation could soon be selling up to five units of its Emerald Hill residential property development to the wife of its chairman.

The property investment and development company revealed on Wednesday that it will be seeking approval from its shareholders at a special general meeting on Dec 5 for the approval of the grant of the options for and the proposed sale of four of its residential units at Emerald Hill to Rosy Yu Lo Si.

The group had earlier said in a note to the SGX in October that Mdm Yu is the the spouse of Christopher Ho Wing-On, a director of the company, and an interested person defined under Chapter 9 of the SGX-ST Listing Manual.

Mr Ho, aged 63, has been serving as the chairman of the group since 1999, having been re-elected to the position this year.

At the special general meeting on Dec 5, Lafe will seek approval for the sale of the four properties in its Residences at Emerald Hill development, at 119 Emerald Hill Road - specifically the units of #07-02, #09-02, #10-02 and #11-02. Each of these units has an option sale price of S$3.56 million but could be sold for S$3.32 million after a 7 per cent rebate.

The group had confirmed earlier that both its audit committee and the board have reviewed and approved the transaction and are satisfied that the number and terms of the transaction are fair and reasonable and are not prejudicial to the interests of the company and its minority shareholders.

Mr Ho had abstained from the board review and approval of the transaction and will continue to do so at the forthcoming meeting of shareholders.

At the same meeting, the group will also be seeking ratification of an option grant relating to the sale of a fifth property to Mdm Yu - unit #08-03 - of the same development. It was announced last December that the unit would be sold to her at about S$4.99 million, after a 2.5 per cent discount from the original price of S$5.12 million.

Lafe, which had last month reported a 92 per cent Q3 net loss, has been banking on the sales of its Emerald Hill development. In its Q3 financial statement last month, the group revealed that "significant resources and efforts have been allocated to market and promote the Residences at Emerald Hill in both the local and overseas premium markets". The group acknowledged that the potential of these sales going forward would depend on government policy in the Singapore property market.

[triproton]

I was seriously looking at the development 5 months ago as they were offering signficant discounts. The things that put me off was the noise from the CTE, the fact the few units that were sold were sold to the Chairman's wife and the very high maintenance charges ($1500 per month. At that time it was 2 or 3 units that were already sold to the wife. This time, it seems that 4 more units are being sold to the wife. This tells me that their marketing efforts have not been successful.