Ho Kang Peng v Scintronix Corp Ltd (formerly known as TTL Holdings Ltd)

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Sundaresh Menon CJ
• Judgment Date: 30 April 2014
• Neutral Citation: [2014] SGCA 22
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No 24 of 2013
• Published date: 02 May 2014
• Year: 2014
• Hearing Date: 06 September 2013
• Plaintiff Counsel: Alvin Tan Kheng Ann (Wong Thomas & Leong)
• Defendant Counsel: Tony Yeo and Fong King Man (Drew & Napier LLC)
• Subject Matter: Companies,Directors,Breach of duty
• Citation: [2014] SGCA 22

Chao Hick Tin JA (delivering the judgment of the court): Introduction

This appeal arises from the decision of the High Court in Suit No 207 of 2009 (“the Suit”). The appellant, Ho Kang Peng (“the Appellant”), who at the relevant time was the chief executive officer (“CEO”) and a director of the respondent, TTL Holdings Limited (“the Company”), was found liable for the breach of various fiduciary duties owed to the Company. The liability arose from certain payments made by the Company to a third party which the High Court found to be unauthorised. The key issues in this appeal concern the purpose for which the payments were made, whether they were duly sanctioned by the Company, and whether the Company is precluded from claiming against the Appellant because it was allegedly equally at fault.

Facts Parties to the dispute

The Company is a publicly listed company on the Stock Exchange of Singapore (“SGX”) and is engaged in the manufacture and supply of moulds and finished plastic components.

The Appellant was the CEO of the Company from 1 November 2005, an executive director of the Company from 24 November 2005 and the executive chairman of the Company from 23 November 2007. He stepped down as the CEO and executive chairman on 28 March 2008, but remained as a non-executive director of the Company until 23 October 2008.

Background to the dispute

In the Suit, the Company claimed against the Appellant for breach of fiduciary, statutory, and contractual duties as a director, and against one Chow Weng Fook (“Chow”) for breach of duties of fidelity and contractual duties as an employee. The claims against Chow were dismissed by the High Court judge (“the Judge”). However, the Appellant was found to have breached his fiduciary duties by failing to seek the approval of the Company’s board of directors (“the Board”) for the remuneration packages of certain contracted advisors and by authorising payments to a Taiwanese company known as Bontech Enterprise Co Ltd (“Bontech”). These payments were made pursuant to a supposed consulting agreement between the Company and Bontech for unspecified services (“the Bontech Agreement”). The present appeal relates only to the decision of the Judge that the Appellant was in breach of his fiduciary duties by authorising the Payments to Bontech pursuant to the Bontech Agreement.

The Appellant signed the Bontech Agreement on behalf of the Company on 1 August 2006. It was to operate for a year. The Bontech Agreement was in title a “Consulting Agreement” and the relevant terms are as follows: 1. Retention of Consultant; Services to be performed. CLIENT hereby retains CONSULTANT for the terms of this Agreement to provide the consulting services set forth in Schedule A for CLIENT (Services).

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2. Payment. CLIENT shall pay CONSULTANT for work done for that month through Cheque payment. Payment shall usually be made on a quarterly basis for United States Dollar Fifteen Thousand and Five Hundred (USD15,500) equivalent. …

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4. Term and Termination.

(a) Unless terminated at an earlier date in accordance with Section 5 (b), this Agreement shall commence as of the date first written above and shall continue for one year.

It is common ground that there was in fact no “Schedule A” to the Bontech Agreement, a schedule which was supposed to set out the scope of Bontech’s services to be provided to the Company. Notwithstanding the fact that no services were rendered by Bontech to the Company, the latter nevertheless made eight payments totalling S$169,644.97 to Bontech purportedly under the Bontech Agreement (“the Payments”). The Payments were made in United States dollars and on each occasion pursuant to payment vouchers signed by the Appellant. No invoices or receipts were issued by Bontech for the Payments. The details of the Payments are as follows:

S/N	Date of Payment	Description	Amount (S$)
1	4 August 2006	Professional fee from August 06 – October 06, US$15,500	24,484.25
2	3 November 2006	Professional fee from November 06 – December 06, US$15,500	24,311.75
3	31 January 2007	Professional fee from November 06 – January 07, US$15,500	23,939.75
4	25 April 2007	Professional fee from February 07 – April 07, US$16,000	24,344.00
5	26 July 2007	Professional fee from May 07 –July 07, US$16,062.12	24,616.00
6	14 November 2007	Professional fee from August 07 – October 07, US$16,000	23,192.00
7	30 November 2007	Out-of-pocket money, US$500	724.75
8	29 February 2008	Professional fee from November 07 – January 08, US$16,996.43	24,034.47
Total sum of the payments to Bontech	169,644.97

The Payments were allegedly handed over to one of the Company’s Shanghai-based directors, Oh Chye Huat (“Oh”). The Appellant’s evidence in this regard was that Oh had passed the Payments over to an individual based in Shanghai known only as “Mr Lee”, in exchange for Mr Lee’s undertaking to procure business worth RMB$4m monthly or approximately RMB$50m annually from a major client of the Company known as Pioneer Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd (“Pioneer”), a company incorporated in China.

It is not disputed that there was no formal resolution of the Board authorising the Appellant to enter into the Bontech Agreement or to make the Payments thereunder. However, at trial and in this appeal, the Appellant drew the attention of the court to a resolution dated 22 March 2005 passed by the Company’s remuneration committee (“the RC Resolution”), which approved a total monthly payment of RMB$40,000 for “outstation allowances”, to be paid and split amongst three directors based in Shanghai, namely Sze Man Kuen (“Sze”), Lau Che Hung (“Lau”), and Oh. According to the Appellant, these outstation allowances were meant for onward payment to Mr Lee so as to procure the Pioneer business.

The position of the Company was that it was not aware of the Bontech Agreement and the Payments purportedly made thereunder until the publication of an internal audit report dated 26 September 2008 (“the Audit Report”), six months after the Appellant stepped down as the CEO and executive chairman of the Company. The Audit Report noted that the Appellant had signed the Bontech Agreement which did not specify the nature of the consultancy services to be provided, and that the Company continued to make payments to Bontech even after the Bontech Agreement expired.

Accordingly, on 20 May 2009, the Company commenced the Suit against the Appellant. It claimed that the Appellant failed to act bona fide in the best interest of the Company and to ensure that the Company’s affairs were properly administered. It relied on the fact that the Appellant had signed the Bontech Agreement for unspecified services, paid sums to Bontech without receiving invoices and without obtaining Board approval, and continued to make such payments even beyond the expiry of the Bontech Agreement. The Appellant’s defence was that the Bontech Agreement and the payments made thereunder were for the purposes of procuring business from Pioneer, and that such payments had been approved by the Company’s management even before the Appellant became the CEO of the Company.

The decision below

The Judge in his grounds of decision (“the GD”) found that the Bontech Agreement was fictitious as no consultancy services were in fact provided. It was therefore incumbent on the Appellant to show that the payments were made for some alternative purpose which was in the Company’s interests.

The Judge rejected the Appellant’s defence on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to support the Appellant’s claim that the Bontech Agreement and the Payments were meant to procure the Pioneer business. In particular, he took issue with the Appellant’s version of events as the Company’s sales figures to Pioneer did not substantiate the Appellant’s assertion; neither did the remuneration accounts of the three Shanghai-based directors nor the dearth of evidence surrounding the receipt of the Payments and the purported recipient, Mr Lee, help the Appellant’s case. As a result, the Judge found that the Appellant had failed to show that the Payments were made in the Company’s best interests and therefore that he had breached his fiduciary duty to the Company.

The parties’ submissions

Before us, it is still common ground that there was neither any “Schedule A” to the Bontech Agreement nor any actual “consultancy services” performed by Bontech for the Company pursuant to the Bontech Agreement. The Appellant maintains that the payments were made for the purpose of procuring the Pioneer business for the Company, and that the Company’s management was at all material times aware of the Payments. He argues that the Judge erred in discounting the evidence adduced regarding the practice of paying sums to Mr Lee to procure the Pioneer business, the correlation between the Payments and the Company’s sales figures with Pioneer and the remuneration records of the Shanghai-based directors, and the reasons which led to the creation of the Bontech Agreement.

The Company’s case, on the other hand, is that once it was established that the Appellant had signed a sham agreement for non-existent services and made payments thereunder without formal Board authorisation, the burden shifted to the Appellant to prove that he had acted in the best interest of the Company. The Company argues that the Judge was correct in finding that the evidence adduced by the Appellant was inconclusive as to the purpose of the Bontech Agreement and the Payments, and that the Appellant has therefore failed to satisfy his evidential burden. In the alternative, the Company avers that even if it could be proven that the Bontech Agreement and the Payments were meant for procuring the Pioneer...