Breakfast with ladies

Finally, we have to say goodbye to our home of eight years Horizon Tower.

Last week, we moved to our new house, oh, how tired I was.

My old neighbor Jenny called me one morning "come, I have asked Amy along, let go for a nice breakfast."

"I can't, I have so much to do."

"That is why you need a break."
...

I agreed, partly because I was too tired to do any more, partly because I had not seen her for some time.

So, three of us went ahead to American Club for some "fabulous" breakfast, and some ladies "gossip". We found a quiet corner to sit down.

"You are lucky to find replacement unit so fast." Jenny said to me.

"You know, the other day I went to UE square, not even 1800sqf, asking for 2.5million."

"crazy, crazy."

"You know, Orchard Scotes 6 millions, 99 years some more."

"Why should I pay so much for 99 years?!" Amy said indignantly.

"But we have to look for place to stay waaa."

"Wait la, the price is coming down."

"It is unbelievable that last year's price could be so high. Now, at least 30% lower."

"The worse is not over."

"Have you tried YongAnn Park?"
...

"What about you? Amy?" I asked.

"I brought Panda Vally 2006. worse case, we move there la."

"2006 price was still low."

"Ya la, I paid 1.1million."

"a bargain!"

"But, Horizon Tower is a pity. so painful to see such a building will be teared down."
.....

"Stock market is so scary, Ah ya, we really don't know what to do."

"Interest rate is just 1.6%, leaving money in bank is useless too."

"all the prices go up, oil, food, and..."

"Ah ya, don't talk so much about troubles, let us eat."

"Let's eat!"

Home

It looks likely that we will have to move from our home of seven years. Seven years ago, when our daughter was just born, we moved here Horizon Tower, I well remembered that after tiresome moving, we vowed that we should not move again till our children grow up. Now our four children will have to miss their familiar neighbourhood and their friends.

It will be a new chapter for our children and our family. Nonetheless, we have to look ahead and move on and put behind all the behind.

What we will treasure and miss most is that the relationship with our neighbours. Many will find in fact Horizon Tower is a nice place to stay.

HORIZON TOWERS SAGA

Weekend • December 8, 2007

Tan Hui Leng
huileng@mediacorp.com.sg

THE applicants' prayer is granted.

And with those words, the Strata Titles Board (STB) declared on Friday that the highly-contested en bloc sale of Horizon Towers will go through despite objections from its minority owners.

STB deputy president Philip Chan took less than 10 minutes to announce the board's final ruling and the reasons for approving the sale application this time round, after rejecting it in August on a technicality.

"The board's decision is as follows, the applicants' (majority owners) prayer is granted … the board is of the opinion that the respondents (the minority owners) have not made out their respective cases as a matter of fact," he told about 90 people, including 70 condo owners, who had packed the room at the STB office in Maxwell Road.

A palpable sense of subdued relief could be detected in the room after he finished talking. Amid the silence, a lone woman clapped.

A few condo owners looked dejected as residents started filing out of the room.

"The decision was not unexpected," said a minority owner, Ms J Tan.

Another looked close to tears as he told reporters that with the current property prices, he was not sure where he could afford to move.

Looking somewhat weary, sales committee chairman Lim Seng Hoo said: "We worked very hard for this outcome … It's been a very long drawn out thing, we're all very tired after many months."

The Horizon Towers saga started early this year when Hotel Properties Ltd (HPL) and its two partners clinched the deal to buy the condominium for $500 million.

Under the agreement, which had an 84-per-cent consent level, the 199 apartment owners would have pocketed about $2.3 million each and the 11 penthouse owners would have received at least $4 million each.

However, some minority owners raised objections to the sale, alleging, among other things, irregularities in the procedures leading to the sale.

As en bloc sale prices skyrocketed, owners who had originally consented to the deal joined in the dissenting voices, pointing out that the $500-million deal no longer reflected the condominium's "true value".

In August, the STB accepted the argument put forward by the minority owners that there were technical irregularities in the application for the collective sale order.

However, in October, the High Court, which had been asked to review the STB's decision, sent the case back to the board, culminating in an eight-day hearing that led to Friday's decision.

It came four days before the sale completion date expires on Dec 11.

While the grounds of decision will be out in "due course", Dr Chan said the STB was partly guided by a similar en bloc dispute related to Phoenix Court as well as parliamentary speeches by Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Ho Peng Kee and Law Minister S Jayakumar regarding what constitutes "bad faith".

Ultimately, Dr Chan said, the minority owners had failed to prove that the sales committee acted in bad faith .

The minority owners are now mulling their next step. They can still appeal to the High Court.

In a statement later, a group of some 80 consenting owners said: "We are happy with the decision … We look forward to the buyers confirming that they will proceed with the deal and withdrawing the legal suits they have started against some owners."

Source from: Todayonline @ Dec 8, 2007

Finally, Horizon Towers en bloc sale gets go-ahead

Dec 8, 2007

Strata Titles Board rejects objections from minority owners, who have a month to appeal
By Joyce Teo
AFTER months of sometimes bitter wrangling, the collective sale of Horizon Towers looks set to go ahead.

The latest chapter of the saga drew to a close yesterday when the Strata Titles Board (STB) granted an order for the $500 million sale to proceed.

This is in time for the sale of the 99-year leasehold Leonie Hill estate to be wrapped up before a Dec 11 deadline.

The buyers are Hotel Properties (HPL) and partners Morgan Stanley Real Estate and Qatar Investment Authority.

The minority owners objecting to the sale have one month to appeal against the decision. They have yet to indicate if they will do so.

The Horizon Towers saga started earlier this year because several owners were unhappy with the sale price given that prices had surged by the time the HPL-led consortium bought the site at the $500 million reserve price.

The buyers, who had earlier filed a lawsuit against the majority owners for alleged breach of contract, are maintaining their right to sue until the sale is complete.

HPL director Christopher Lim yesterday said: 'We are pleased that the STB has allowed the collective sale and rejected the objectors' case, including their allegations of bad faith.'

More than 60 people turned up for the STB decision. The STB tribunal's chairman Philip Chan announced that the application had been granted. The grounds of decision will be out in due course.

He said the board rejected various points put forward in opposition to the sale. One, a constitutional point, involved a few objectors arguing that en bloc rules infringed fundamental rights.

Other points involved whether the requisite 80 per cent minimum approval level had been obtained and procedural requirements met.

The STB tribunal said it had been guided by the Phoenix Court case. The collective sale of the St Thomas Walk pro- perty was approved. An objecting couple appealed against the STB decision, but the High Court upheld the STB order on Nov 9.

Haven't STB have their own judgment according to the moral and legal requirement, according to their own conscious after hearing so much of unforgivable misbehavior in the proceeds of sales?

Another point dealt with whether the deal was done in good faith, including the sale price and proposed method of distribution of funds.

The tribunal said one key issue was the purpose of the en bloc rules - to facilitate such sales.

" since when the purpose of STB has changed from protecting the interest of minority to facilitate such sales?"

An industry observer said: 'Generally, there has been a paradigm shift in the approach to interpreting collective sale rules, from a literal manner to a purposive way.'

Mr K Shanmugam of Allen & Gledhill, representing the buyers, said: 'Our client entered into the transaction in good faith and paid what was then a record price for the property.'

'The application should therefore have proceeded smoothly, but the market changed. As a result, the case went through a number of critical junctures,' he said.

They are, however, happy with the end result, he added.

The consortium bought Horizon Towers back in January. The sale application was thrown out by the same STB tribunal in early August because of three missing pages.

The buyers then took out the lawsuit, filed an appeal with the High Court and had the sale deadline extended by four months to Dec 11, as allowed by the contract.

In October, the High Court sent the case back to STB.

Recently, two collective sale applications were rejected by the STB - Airview Towers in St Thomas Walk and Finland Gardens in East Coast Terrace and Avenue.

joyceteo@sph.com.sg

The Surprise at STB hearing

It was a big surprise for everyone, when one of CSPs of Horizon Tower represented by her lawyer objected the validity of Collective Sales Agreement and the authority of newly elected Sales committee to expend the four months under Option of Purchase agreement with HPPL. Neither majority nor minority had expected such a surprise. After about half hour argument whether STBjurisdiction to decide such things, the chairman of STB board asked the lawyer to submit the written application by this Friday, and the counsel for majority owner CSPs shall give the reply on next Monday. At meantime, he didn't allow him to be a party.

That shows the long suffered Horizon Tower owners will have a hard way ahead.

Now, the main objections that minority owners will be regarding the "bad faith" of the sales agreement and whole procedure. The fate of this troubled dealing is still not clear.

Judgment Day for Horizon Tower Appeal

Today, Honorable Justice Choo Han Teck delivers his judgment in regarding of Horizon Tower appeal against STB’s decision to dismiss its application. To many of majority owner’s happiness and relief, he allows the appeal, and allows application remit back to STB with no further direction or amendment specially ordered by his honorable court.

His judgment, in my laymen’s opinion, is perfectly balanced, fair and just. The principle which leads to his decision was the simple the principle of law, he states

“in nature of law is always purposive for if man and society were perfect there would be no need for law. We often encounter complication when one principle of law appears irreconcilably incongruous with another. We are also often compelled to seek the middle course between extremes such as immutability and ephemerality; sometimes as an exercise in precision and sometimes out of nervous uncertainty. Nonetheless,the courts are also often urged to reject the compromise in order to be absolute right rather than to be half wrong. Law is also largely interpretative, and so "absolute" is a very difficult word to employ. Almost everyone has his idea of what the law is or should be and how it is to be applied. It is not unusual to find that the more uncertain and difficult the hermeneutic exercise becomes, the more one restores to vague terms such as "justice". That is why it is not unusual, therefore, to find opposing arguments each claiming to be an argument from justice. Anyone who has studied the chariot race in the Iliad will understand the inherent contradiction in that word. The conflict between fairness, entitlement, and desert all too often stands in the way of a just or ideal solution to disputes.

That said, fairness requires that the law is applied consistently to everyone in similar circumstances. It gazed upon the horse as it does the horseman. It may be the appellant today who slipped, tomorrow, the respondents. It the majority succeeds it is because it is right, not because it is the majority. Likewise if the majority succeeds it is because it is right and not because it receives favors granted only to the underdog. Therefore, in determining the correct interpretation of a law or principle of law, it will be helpful to consider whether an opponent would have objected as strenuously as he did had he been the one in need of the very interpretation he challenges."

You can see that Mr Choo is not only a highly fair and respectable judge but also a logical and reasonable philosopher. It is Singapore court's honor and blessing to have men like him.


Honorable Justice Choo’s decision really makes many majority owner gladly relieved. For more than a month, they have been worried and anxious for huge amount alleged damaged lawsuit looming over their head, with the dark shadow painted by the media to be “greedy” and “contentious”, now, at least, they are vindicated and are giving chance to show the otherwise. Though there were many difficult moments, Horizon Tower owners came to be united and more respectful to one and another. just because of these moments, a lasting and deeper relationship has formed among neighbors; it will become a lasting memory and celebrated mankindness to all CSPs. Truly all things work together for good.

HORIZON TOWERS SAGA

Owners: missing pages are a minor defect

Judge Choo to deliver judgment on appeal next week

By MICHELLE QUAH

(SINGAPORE) Yesterday's penultimate Horizon Towers appeal session was a decidedly tamer affair.

Still, Senior Counsel K Shanmugam of Allen & Gledhill (A&G), acting for the Hotel Properties consortium, was not spared heckling by majority owners seated in the public gallery when he sought permission from the court to address submissions made by the minority owners the day before.

Senior Counsel Michael Hwang, representing one of the minorities, opposed the move vigorously, arguing that only the applicants for the appeal - that is the majority owners, represented by the sales committee and their lawyers, Tan Rajah & Cheah - be allowed to reply to earlier submissions.

Judge Choo Han Teck proposed a middle ground: he will accept a written reply from Mr Shanmugam, but not an oral rebuttal, after the session.

Overall, the session was relatively calm, with Senior Counsel Chelva Rajah of Tan Rajah & Cheah, representing the majority owners, replying to submissions made by the minorities.

Mr Rajah rebutted the minorities' claims that three missing pages could render an entire collective sale application null and void. At the heart of this appeal is whether the Strata Titles Board (STB) was right, in August, to throw out Horizon Towers' application because it was missing three signature pages.

'There has to be some proportion to this,' Mr Rajah exhorted. He said that if the missing pages were substantial, then he would agree that it could be considered invalid. But, in the case of Horizon Towers, the three signature pages of the collective sale agreement - appended to the application - were only accidentally left out.

'And it's not really three pages, because one of the pages was there - but it was a copy of the faxed version, rather than the original - so it's actually just two missing pages in question,' Mr Rajah added. 'Nothing can be more minor than this.'

He also cited the case of Dragon Court's en bloc sale in 2003. The case went to court on a similar issue of missing disclosure. In that case, it was not disclosed that some of the owners were linked to the buyer. But the High Court allowed that application to stand, because the non-disclosure was subsequently made to the STB during the hearing.

Leaning on that judgment, Mr Rajah pointed out that Horizon Towers' majority sellers had done the same - they had brought the missing pages to the attention of the STB during the August hearing.

He also argued against the minorities' claims that the board - which heard the Horizon Towers' application - had no power to amend the defective application. The minorities said the board was not properly constituted because the application, which leads to the constitution of the board, was defective.

But Mr Rajah said that regulations - and the Parliament's recent amendments to en bloc rules - clearly show that the board was properly constituted, upon receiving the application, and had the power to cure any defects.

He concluded by asking the court to consider the facts of this case and decide if an entire application could be rendered invalid because of two missing pages.

Justice Choo adjourned the hearing to next week, at a date to be set later, when he will deliver his judgment on the appeal.


From "Business Time"


At the end of hearing, Mr K Shanmugam told Mr Chelva Rajah:" Now I know I better not walk near to Horizon Tower."
Mr C Rajah : "No after dusk"
Mr Chairman of New Sales Committee :" Not before HPPL redevelop the Horizon Tower."

Horizon Tower High Court Appeal Hearing

Our "learned friend" restored a few time during the Horizon Tower Hearing that "the courtroom is not circus", but I found it even more amusing than circus.

Hostile end to Horizon Towers hearing
By Fiona Chan, Property Reporter
TENSIONS ran high at the already prickly Horizon Towers hearing yesterday, as lawyers fought over who would have the last word.
The heated exchanges lasted less than an hour but they were more hostile than any of the previous day-long sessions since last Friday.

They brought to a close the appeal over the estate's bungled collective sale - an appeal peppered by barbed comments between highly paid lawyers and regular jeers and boos from the public gallery.

The only lawyer scheduled to speak yesterday was Senior Counsel Chelva Rajah of Tan, Rajah and Cheah. He represents the condominium's majority owners, who have asked the High Court to overturn the Strata Titles Board's (STB's) dismissal of their collective sale application in August.

Mr Rajah was to reply to arguments made by the minority owners' lawyers on Tuesday. The minority owners want the STB decision upheld.

But even before he could speak, Senior Counsel K.Shanmugam - representing the Horizon Towers buyers - attempted to have the final say. He asked Justice Choo Han Teck for '10 to 15 minutes' after Mr Rajah's speech to address some of the 'new' points raised on Tuesday.

Barely had Mr Shanmugam finished his request when Senior Counsel Michael Hwang and Senior Counsel K.S. Rajah, who each represent a different group of minority owners, were on their feet to object.

Although Justice Choo stayed the conflict by asking Mr Chelva Rajah to proceed with his remarks, Mr Shanmugam rose again once Mr Rajah was finished.

His plea to be allowed a response was interrupted by Mr Hwang, who said it would be 'unfair' to allow Mr Shanmugam 'a second bite of the cherry when he should have said all this in the first place'.

Justice Choo proposed two peace options: either Mr Shanmugam got five minutes to speak, or all the lawyers were to read his new points and respond in writing within the day.

Mr Hwang opted for the second option almost at the same time that Mr Shanmugam chose the first. It all looked quite comic to the tittering public gallery but the tension in the courtroom remained high, prompting Justice Choo to close the session without allowing Mr Shanmugam's speech.

In the end, only Mr Rajah had a say yesterday. He noted that Parliament will soon formally give the STB powers to ignore technical flaws - such as the three missing pages in Horizon Towers' collective sale application - showing that the STB was always intended to have these powers.

Newspaper report is not accuate on En bloc mess

From: The Straits Time Sep 23, 2007
En blocked: How Horizon Towers made history
The Leonie Hill condo was just one of scores of estates snapped up by developers in a collective sales frenzy over the past two years. Now its owners are being sued by a developer in a landmark case that will go before the High Court on Thursday. How did it all come to this?
Joyce Teo reports

THE first hint that the $500 million sale faced trouble can be traced to an anonymous letter dated April 25 that was sent to owners of the condo's 210 units.
It started: 'Dear fellow owners, Some of us begin to wonder if our en bloc exercise now makes sense.'

The letter writers urged decisive action, suggesting that the owners of the 25-year-old property were being short-changed and that a far higher price was possible.

'If enough like-minded owners decide to rescind the (agreement) and the majority falls below 80 per cent, the application to the Strata Titles Board (STB) can be repealed.'

The buyers were local developer Hotel Properties Ltd (HPL) and its two partners Morgan Stanley Real Estate-managed funds and Qatar Investment Authority.

They agreed in a private treaty deal in February to buy the 99-year leasehold condo for $500 million, which was the reserve price set last year. Until early February, it was a record price in absolute terms for an en bloc sale.

At that price, each owner of the condo's 199 units would get about $2.3 million, with the 11 penthouse units reaping $4 million to $6.28 million.

But the letter writers were unhappy. Prices of neighbouring properties had skyrocketed since the deal was struck.

'We are now believing that our en bloc price no longer reflects the true value of Horizon Towers and we strongly feel that if we sell our unit individually, we would achieve prices far better than what this en bloc has fetched us.'

One case the letter cited was neighbouring condo development The Grangeford.

Grangeford owners were asking for $660 million, or $2,016 per sq ft (psf) of potential gross floor area.

That was more than double the $850 psf of total floor area achieved by Horizon Towers. 'Deep down...many owners may now be regretting this en bloc. They may be willing to join this...movement,' the letter said.

It engendered enough discontent over the sale price to lead some owners to attempt a deal reversal. Also, 10 groups filed objections to the sale.

Mediation sessions before the STB to settle the dispute started in late May. But those attempts at mediation between the warring camps of owners failed.

A group of 42 disgruntled owners, who had hired a law firm for advice, called for an extraordinary general meeting at Horizon Towers.

They wanted to remove the sale committee, which was blamed for not consulting the owners when it granted the option to purchase nine months after the reserve price was set. This failed.

But most members of the first sale committee later resigned and were replaced by new ones - and a second committee took their place.

At this point, it is worth noting that when the original Horizon Towers sale tender closed in August last year, there were no offers at its reserve price.

But the property market picked up significantly after that. In late June this year, a developer said it wanted to buy The Grangeford for $592 million, or about $1,810 psf per plot ratio - the highest price achieved for a 99-year leasehold site.

According to an affidavit filed by HPL for the High Court case on Thursday, an anonymous letter was circulated around this time to Horizon Towers residents, asking them to 'act quickly and decisively' to salvage something for themselves as Horizon Towers was, the letter said, being given away at a relatively paltry sum.


The STB hearing

THE bitter dispute that had focused on the condo's sale price took an unexpected turn on Aug 3.

That was when the STB threw out the application for sale approval because of procedural errors - the sale paperwork was not in order.

There was another problem: The contract between the HPL-led consortium and the sellers included an atypical condition, according to market players.

The sellers were given the option to extend the sale deadline by another four months if the sale was not completed within six months of the original deal in February - that is, by Aug 11.

A senior property consultant said: 'The discretion to extend the time frame usually lies with the buyer in the first instance, and thereafter upon mutual agreement.'

With the deal now apparently dead, the HPL-led consortium, represented by lawyers K. Shanmugam and William Ong from Allen & Gledhill, immediately swung into action. They wrote to the sellers alleging they were in breach of the February contract and wanted them to extend the Aug 11 deadline so that the procedural errors could be corrected and the application to the STB refiled.

But the Aug 11 deadline came and went. By now, neighbour had turned against neighbour as the stakes grew higher.

The HPL-led consortium has now proceeded to sue the members of the first and second sale committees and is seeking an order to bind all the other sellers. If that order is granted by the court on Thursday, it will mean that all Horizon Towers sellers will be liable to pay damages to HPL.

HPL is seeking about $800 million to $1 billion in lost profits as a result of the alleged breach of contract. So the owners of each unit could be looking at a bill of more than $5 million.

Since then, some majority owners have reached out to HPL, and last Wednesday, a group of them met HPL chief Ong Beng Seng, where HPL made it clear that it will drop the suit only if a collective sale order is obtained.

A ray of hope emerged the following day, last Thursday, when a large group of owners met to appoint yet another - the third - sale committee. More significantly, they agreed to extend the sale deadline until Dec 11.

HPL and its partners are waiting for an official confirmation of the extension before they seek an adjournment of this Thursday's hearing.

Even if the High Court case is adjourned, the sale would have a long way to go, given the disputes so far.


Lessons learnt

THE case - which has involved more than 10 lawyers - has underscored the point that a collective sale agreement is a legal document and sellers may be liable to legal action.

This is a sobering thought for property investors or owners who believe that the only serious question they have to consider in a collective sale is the price they will receive for their units.

Lawyer Henry Heng from Tan Peng Chin LLC said: 'The case highlights and reinforces the potential consequences and liabilities of owners pushing for an en bloc sale when the en bloc process or application goes wrong.''

The Horizon Towers case has also changed the way collective sales are conducted. Owners, their property agents or lawyers involved would now pay more attention to procedural requirements, said Mr Heng.

The High Court hearing is fixed for this Thursday while a separate appeal by the sellers to the High Court to quash the STB order invalidating the original sale will be heard a day later.

If that appeal succeeds, the case could return to the STB. What would happen then is anyone's guess - though many owners are no doubt longing for signs of a resolution on the horizon.

joyceteo@sph.com.sg "

Horizon Tower Collective sales has been one of media hottest spots. However, how factual those media reports are? Report like this one, once again, casted partially wrong impression to the readers. Without advantage of publicity, the residents or more precisely the many consenting subsidiary proprietors(CSPs) are subject to unfair comments from media. In reality and truth, most of CSPs are willing to honor the collective sales agreement with HPPL, even when those anonymous letters were circulated, the majority CSPs rejected the "call for rescinding the contract". Therefore, in law, it is arguable, whether HPPL has any case to sue all CSPs for alleged breach of contract. It is like to use machine gun to shoot many innocent people, while they know that only a few mischievous ones in the group.

This is to show the truth may not necessarily line in the newspaper's report. We urge you to pray for God's justice and kind will to be restored among neighbours and among business partners, let all these En bloc mess be amicably settled.

SINGAPORE’S EN BLOC MESS

In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, Singapore’s building construction fever resulted in many heritage buildings including almost the entire China town, being bulldozed away to make room for modern, tall skyscrapers. Today’s en bloc fever has the setting for a remake.

We however should not just refer to solidly constructed buildings, giving way to taller skyscrapers, changing our accustomed landscape. Far worse is the legal mess popping out in en bloc sales, hogging the front pages of many newspapers. This in turn stems from the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act that governs en bloc sales, which new changes coming into effect on 1 October 2007 are unlikely to solve. The fundamental problem is that a law originally aimed at ensuring the proper maintenance of apartment buildings has become the Code for takeover purchases of buildings for enforcing the sale upon reluctant minority owners.

In the case of equities, the law protects minority shareholders from forced selling, up to the point where a takeover offer receives 90% acceptance. For our homes, which are of far greater importance, a mere 80% acceptance if the property is older than 20 years would suffice for a forced takeover.

For equities, the offeror has to purchase all of the shares tendered in acceptance. In en bloc sales, the purchaser can walk away if the majority of owners fail to deliver an order from the Strata Title Board (“STB”) to enforce the sale upon the minority owners.

For en bloc sales, the minority owners are only allowed to rely on their historical purchase cost or valuations done at the time of the sales and purchase contract. No consideration is given for his convictions of future market appreciation.

Like Horizon Towers, now the subject of a bitter legal suit launched by Horizon Properties Pte Ltd against the majority owners. The Sale and Purchase contract terms set a 6 months period for obtaining the STB order, expiring on 11 August 2007, with an option to extend thereafter vesting in the Sellers, which is not a usual case. Due to many different factors, not least of which a heavily occupied STB, setting at one point a September 2007 date for hearing, the process was not as smooth as could be. Eventually, the application was dismissed on technical grounds.

The messy outcome of this is that HPPL had, even prior to 11 August 2007, threatened to sue, based on changes in market prices, which have gone up substantially in just a short period. Here is the most crucial anomaly of using the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act to govern en bloc sales. The minority owners cannot rely on changes in market prices during the entire STB application process, but the Purchaser has this right!

As far as the statutes are concerned, which Parliament ostensibly passed in order to protect the minority shareholders, case law shows that in many cases where the STB had ruled in protection of minority owners, reliance was mostly upon administrative errors and not on the substantial current property values.

The above fundamental anomalies show that a separate Code on en bloc sales has to be drawn up, if this mess is ever to be prevented.