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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

What is fair and objective report?

It was the second day of STB resumed Horizon Tower Hearing, here is the report from Business Times:
Horizon Towers sale could be timed out by tribunal decision

STB says it is not bound to rule by sale completion date; lawsuit looms

By MICHELLE QUAH

(SINGAPORE) The Strata Titles Board (STB) tribunal has delivered a startling decision that could spell the end of the en bloc sale of Horizon Towers. The ruling could in turn resurrect the $1 billion lawsuit filed by the buyers against the sellers.

Tribunal chairman Philip Chan announced yesterday that the board was under no legal obligation to rule on whether to approve the collective sale on or before Dec 11, the sale completion date.

This means, if the tribunal chooses to make a decision only after Dec 11, the sale agreement between the buyers and the sellers will lapse - and the en bloc sale will collapse.

The decision took many observers by surprise since a ruling after the sale completion deadline would effectively render the role of the tribunal pointless.

Mr Chan said yesterday the board made its decision after considering the submissions made by all the parties involved: the majority owners who have applied for a collective sale order, and the minority owners who are opposing the sale.

The would-be buyers - Hotel Properties (HPL) and its partners - were not permitted to be parties to this hearing, and could not make any submissions on the matter.

The tribunal on Tuesday asked the relevant parties to submit their arguments on whether the board had a legal obligation to make a decision on the collective sale order on or before Dec 11.

Mr Chan announced yesterday that, as all parties were in agreement that the board was under no such obligation, the tribunal would not be bound to make a decision by Dec 11.

The position seemingly runs counter to the one taken by the tribunal at an earlier Horizon Towers hearing in June, when Mr Chan agreed to bring forward the hearing dates - so as to allow the tribunal to make its decision before the earlier sale completion deadline of Aug 11.

Mr Chan said then, as grounds for doing so, that 'courts do not sit for futility', adding: 'Courts are here to make sure that if we do give an order, that order must stick. The order must be put into operation; otherwise it would be unproductive. It may even be silly for a court to sit.'

The tribunal's decision yesterday has not gone down well with HPL and its partners.

HPL group executive director Christopher Lim told BT: 'We are very concerned about this development. It is surprising that the tribunal took the view that it had no duty to make a ruling before Dec 11, as that may potentially scuttle the transaction.'

He added: 'We are also very disappointed that the majority sellers did not take the position that the matter be dealt with expeditiously and before Dec 11. During the earlier hearings, we had made it clear that such conduct by the majority sellers is in breach of contract.

'As a result of these developments, we are currently reviewing our position.'

HPL and its partners have already sued the majority owners for breach of contract - claiming damages of up to $1 billion - but that suit has been stayed, pending the outcome of this STB hearing.

But HPL and its partners earlier also made it clear that they will consider resurrecting the legal claim against the majority owners if the en bloc sale ultimately falls through.

The dramatic reaction sparked by this one announcement was in marked contrast to the humdrum proceedings of the rest of the day. Former sales committee member Wee Hian Siew spent a second day on the stand, being grilled on whether he did his utmost to act in the owners' best interests in the en bloc sale.

The session also saw a few laughs, as Mr Chan quipped that he would refrain from making any more jokes during the hearing - 'in case I get reported', he said. BT reported Mr Chan's wisecrack about Mr Wee being a secretary 'without a skirt' yesterday.

The mood among the owners was generally upbeat, with some even distributing Deepavali sweets to those present.


Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

That really leads us wondering what the fair and objective report ought to be, is that the duty of reporters to be objective and accurate in their news-reporting?. Comparing the same story by the fellow reporters on The Strait Time and Chinese 联合早报, we can see the difference among these reports.