Monday 18 March 2013

DailyMail: Chairman of MUI in divorce battle

The UK tabloid DailyMail reported the following:

Former Miss Malaysia could get £500m payout in Britain's biggest ever divorce settlement from multimillionaire husband

Pauline Chai, now 66, is divorcing Malaysian businessman Khoo Kay Peng Chairman of Malaysian United Industries has properties around the world The 74-year-old also owns a 40 per cent stake in Laura Ashley Divorce petition filed last month on grounds of 'unreasonable behaviour'

The 74-year-old also has a 40 per cent stake in Laura Ashley, which now has sales of £286 million a year, and is director of Corus Hotels Limited which owns ten hotels including the grand Corus Hyde Park Hotel.

Some more information at the website of The Times.

Certain assets are held by listed Malaysian companies (not by Khoo personally) in the MUI and Pan Malaysia stable (PMI and PMCorp), those companies also have liabilities and are owned by other shareholders.

One should therefore not count the value of the assets but of the shares of these companies, and the share prices of all these companies are languishing, they are all penny stocks.

There have been serious Corporate Governance concerns in all of them, as mentioned in this blog and much more in WhereIsZeMoola.

I therefore get the impression that the above amounts are widely overstated (at least as far as they relate to the assets in listed companies). Khoo Kay Peng is also not listed in the Top 13 of the richest Malaysians.


2 comments:

  1. From what I understand, his wealth that is tied up in public companies is only valued at $150USD as stated by Forbes. The figure they have given take into account what is held in all his private companies and his personal stake in public companies, including personal assets such as properties, cash etc.

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  2. Agree, the GBP 500M as settlement (meaning 50% of his asset is fastly overstated, the USD 150M might be more near to the truth, at least for the listed assets.

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