Legal

RBC Joins Others In Suing Clients Following Singapore Market Plunge - Report

Tom Burroughes Group Editor 10 April 2014

RBC Joins Others In Suing Clients Following Singapore Market Plunge - Report

Royal Bank of Canada sued three private wealth clients in Singapore, joining companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. seeking money owed by customers after an October stock plunge.

Royal Bank of Canada sued three private wealth clients in Singapore, joining companies including Goldman Sachs Group seeking money owed by customers after an October stock plunge, according to Bloomberg.

The Toronto-listed bank declined to comment to WealthBriefing when contacted about the matter.

The report said that Blumont Group’s executive chairman Neo Kim Hock and executive director James Hong and businessman Nelson Fernandez owe RBC a total of $63.3 million, according to lawsuits filed in the Singapore High Court. The men refused to pay after shares in companies such as Blumont, Asiasons Capital and LionGold Corp, held as security, tumbled in the October crash, the bank said in court papers.

This brings the total banks and brokers are seeking to recover from the crash to at least $210 million.

Last week, Singapore’s central bank and other authorities have expanded a probe into suspected stock-trading irregularities around the plunge of the three commodity companies that erased $6.9 billion in market value. Investigators are seeking electronic data from Neo, Hong and executives from six other companies.

Royal Bank is seeking $22.8 million from Neo, $17.8 million from Hong and $22.7 million from Fernandez. All three men applied to open accounts with the bank in April 2013 and had as much as $30 million each in credit facilities, the report said.

The bank’s lawsuit against Hong “has no prospect of success” and should be dismissed as it’s frivolous, Hong was quoted. as saying. Neo and Fernandez haven’t filed their defences, the report said, adding they did not respond to enquiries.


Register for WealthBriefing today

Gain access to regular and exclusive research on the global wealth management sector along with the opportunity to attend industry events such as exclusive invites to Breakfast Briefings and Summits in the major wealth management centres and industry leading awards programmes