JUST when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. The City Developments Limited (CDL) boardroom soap opera had largely passed me by, like a series with the Kardashians. I knew it existed. I knew it involved rich people wearing the kind of clothes and jewellery that could buy a BTO flat. And I knew it was a source of entertainment for many, like watching a piano-playing kitten on YouTube.
But it was overly familiar, like the bangy, crashing scenes at the end of every Marvel movie where folks with otherworldly wealth and powers turn up for a public showdown. There’s no Thanos, but there was a fabulous purple tracksuit top worn by Kwek Leng Beng in a photo with Dr Catherine Wu outside GEEKCON 2024 International – a photo that has been circulated more times than the image of the Moon Landing.
If there is one lesson to learn from this tawdry saga, it is that a Singaporean billionaire can rock 1980s casual leisurewear like no other. Never mind a CDL comeback on the stock exchange, I can only visualise a boy band comeback on the music charts.
Anyway, I digress, rather like the media coverage of the CDL fandango, which has made the average Korean melodrama look restrained.
To use a hackneyed industry term, the story has had more legs than a chorus line on The Graham Norton Show (that’s a deep cut for the most devoted followers of the case).
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The CDL boardroom drama
Credit: GEEKCON
Honestly, I initially found the obsession tiring in its predictability. Friends and media colleagues were eager to share the tiniest morsels in WhatsApp groups. Notes and messages got weirder and weirder.
“You see Kwek Leng Beng accuse his son, Sherman Kwek, of a boardroom “coup”?”
“You see they wanna sack the son as group CEO?”
“You see how shares dropped to a 16-year low?”
“You see how Dr Catherine Wu, 65, was an adviser to the board of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C), a subsidiary of CDL, and was accused of “interfering in matters going well beyond her scope”, adding that “she wields and exercises enormous influence”?”
“You see how Neil Humphreys wrote a series of made-up unwieldy texts, using full quotes and correct punctuation, to recap the fiasco, because if he had to go through the whole thing one more time, he was going to cut off his own fingers?”
I just wasn’t interested. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ukraine-Russia, the rise of the Far Right in Europe and populism everywhere, the polycrisis, supply chains, climate change, AI, the incessant drilling beneath my apartment and the sunbird that pops by every day to crap on my window ledge all concerned me more than the latest mega-rich family squabbling over their mega-rich problems.
But Singapore has been consumed by the interminable affair – and I’ll take a stab at the reasons why – but I wasn’t interested until I read those three fabulous words.
Taiwanese. Music. Artiste.
And I was in.
The Taiwanese music artiste in CDL farce
Credit: GEEKCON
Since I first arrived in Singapore, back in the sepia-tinted 1990s, I have developed an unhealthy fixation with the word “artiste”, largely because I have no idea what it is, what it means and what the job actually involves, beyond laughing maniacally on radio programmes and screaming “let’s make some noise” at National Day Parades.
How does one train to become an “artiste”? Is there a coaching course? Do prospective candidates line up in matching tracksuit tops, preferably purple, and shout, “Singapore! Are you ready to par-tee?”
Elsewhere, there are singers and actors and writers and directors and so forth. In Singapore, there are “artistes”, who can host events, perform at charity galas, act on TV and serve as a director at Millennium & Copthorne Hotels. It’s wonderful.
Recently, my daughter and I were discussing possible degree options and I told her, based on current news events, to find a course that teaches being an “artiste”. She’ll be set for life.
Still, once I realised there was a Taiwanese Music Artiste involved in the CDL debacle, I was all in, hoping to discover answers to those great existential questions, such as, what did Dr Wu actually do for Mr Kwek? Where does culpability lie in this boardroom tussle? What are the family repercussions of losing S$1.9 billion?
I lost my Mum’s favourite slippers once and she didn’t speak to me for a week.
But to be serious for a moment, why are we so obsessed with – and often obsequious to – the uber rich in Singapore? If we devoted a fraction of that energy, enthusiasm and admiration towards the arts, say, rather than wealth accumulation, we’d be celebrating Singaporean Academy Award winners this week, rather than speculating on the potential “losers” in the Kwek family.
While business commentators are understandably focusing on the famous Chinese saying that wealth rarely survives three generations – the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves curse reportedly affecting up to 95 percent of family businesses – it might be useful to probe the darker crevices of our values system.
Who do we continue to put on a pedestal? Is the pursuit of wealth any more noble than the pursuit of arts, sports, creativity or anything beyond improving the bottom line of a company? A worthy pursuit, sure, but is it necessarily a superior one?
The constant coverage of the CDL fallout might suggest it was. But the Kwek dispute could serve as a Wizard of Oz moment, a peek behind the curtain to reveal not a superhero, but a man, a father and a son – and a Taiwanese music artiste, lest we forget – dealing with relatable issues.
The drip-feeding of information has suggested that billionaires and their associates are not infallible, but vulnerable and imperfect, like the rest of us, and susceptible to the same human vices: pride, envy and a lust for 80s leisurewear.
It’s a handy lesson worth remembering in Singapore.
Now, if someone could just tell me what an “artiste” does.
