Ong Beng Seng's HPL looks to cut stakes in Forum shopping mall, voco Orchard hotel: Sources
SINGAPORE – The property firm of embattled billionaire Ong Beng Seng is looking to reduce its stakes in two marquee assets along Singapore's Orchard Road shopping strip, according to people familiar with the matter.
Hotel Properties Ltd. (HPL) is in talks to sell majority stakes in the Forum shopping mall, as well as the voco Orchard hotel, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
HPL is seeking a deal that would value the two adjacent assets for at least $2 billion, they said.
A spokesperson for Singapore-listed HPL declined to comment. The firm has interests in more than 40 hotels across the globe including the Four Seasons in Singapore, as well as resorts in the Maldives.
Ong, 79, has been in the spotlight in the last couple of years after being implicated in a scandal that led to the imprisonment of a senior politician in Singapore. Ong has indicated he
plans to plead guilty on Aug 4 after being charged in 2024 for abetting former Transport Minister S. Iswaran over two flights and a night's stay at the Four Seasons in Doha. It's unclear whether the case has any relation to the firm's planned asset sales.
HPL won provisional permission from authorities in August 2023 to redevelop the two sites, along with its company headquarters, HPL House. That was part of a government plan to rejuvenate the Orchard Road shopping district by allowing developers to seek more space or change of use for older buildings.
The company intends to keep its ownership of HPL House under the potential sale, the people said. It said earlier this year in its annual report that redevelopment plans are 'being refined for submission to the relevant authorities.'
In April,
Ong relinquished his decades-long tenure as managing director of HPL. Two long-time executives replaced him, after he cited a desire to devote more time to his medical issues. But he continues to provide 'strategic oversight and direction' to the firm. Together with his wife Christina, the Malaysian tycoon controls HPL with a roughly 60 per cent stake. The next largest shareholder is Hong Kong billionaire Peter Woo.
The Forum mall is valued at about $990 million, group executive director Christopher Lim said at the company's annual meeting in April. That estimate doesn't account for the redevelopment. He declined to comment on the value of the voco, formerly the Hilton Singapore, saying the company didn't have a valuation for it.
HPL is set to gain full ownership in August of the Concorde, an $821 million shopping mall and hotel complex on Orchard Road, after buying out minority stakes it didn't own.
The company's stock has soared 46 per cent this year, almost four times the gain in Singapore's Straits Times Index. It was trading up 1.5 per cent, or eight cents, at $5.29 as at 10.15am on July 29. BLOOMBERG
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Business Times
20 minutes ago
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CNA
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Commentary: Amid Kpod panic, let's not forget ‘regular' vapes are still dangerous
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This division, whether conscious or subconscious, risks blunting the urgency around the vaping epidemic as a whole. STUDENTS USING AND SELLING VAPES Although vaping has always been banned in Singapore, products are still smuggled in. Despite tight border controls and stringent laws, the number of vaping offences has steadily increased. In the first half of 2025, more than 2,500 reports of vaping were made, nearly matching the full-year total of over 3,000 such incidents in 2024. Schools are reporting more students caught with vapes. Some teenagers are now not just users, but also sellers. Just last week (Jul 25), two teenagers approached a Primary 4 student from Fairfield Methodist School as he was walking home from school and tried to get him to buy a vape. In a separate case, a 15-year-old boy who was caught with vapes five times over a 10-month period was recently ordered by a court to be placed in a boys' home. In yet another case, a man was charged in July for manufacturing Kpods at home, the first case of its kind in Singapore. Police found 569 empty pod casings, 1,485 pod covers, 100 loose vape pods and disposable vapes in an HDB flat. The scale of the problem suggests a deeper issue than just breaking the law: Demand is growing, and supply chains are adapting. HEFTIER PENALTIES ARE ONLY PART OF THE SOLUTION Law enforcement has moved quickly. Singapore's plan to list etomidate as a Class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act is a necessary step. It gives law enforcement stronger grounds to impose heftier penalties for Kpod offences. But this is a game of whack-a-mole. A major driver of the Kpod scourge is relentless marketing on social media platforms such as Telegram. Vapes are aggressively marketed as trendy, harmless consumer products. While improving drug enforcement laws is important to stay ahead of these schemes, enforcement alone may not be enough. Part of the challenge lies in how vapes are distributed. They are small, easy to hide and hard to trace. Many are distributed through encrypted messaging apps, peer-to-peer networks, and even unwitting parents returning from overseas trips. This is why another layer is needed: One that educates people on the dangers of vaping and helps them take ownership of their well-being. One recent example is the vape bin initiative, which encourages users to surrender their vapes without fear of punishment. The idea is simple: Get harmful devices off the streets and into bins. Critics have asked why a vape user would not just toss the device down the rubbish chute if he or she truly wanted to quit vaping. Whether the vape is thrown into a rubbish chute or a vape bin is not the point. These initiatives are about fostering community cooperation. About telling people that there is no shame in their past actions and offering a public, deliberate first step to quit vaping. But these efforts can only succeed if backed by support structures such as public education, counselling and addiction recovery services. Teens who are vaping to cope with mental health issues, academic stress or social pressure are likely to respond more favourably to counselling and other rehabilitative programmes than the stick. It is worth noting that a similar, albeit smaller, initiative was launched in November 2023 by the MacPherson Youth Network and Bilby Community Development, calling for youths aged 12 to 30 to surrender their vapes to receive a S$30 gift voucher for shops like Decathlon and Sephora. Whether such financial incentives are enough to motivate quitting is unclear. A more effective long-term approach would focus on helping vape-addicted youths address the underlying issues that compel them to vape in the first place. THERE IS NO 'SAFE' VAPE As public discussions on Kpods continue, it is important to remember this: All forms of vaping come with serious health risks. There is no 'safe' vape. The authorities are rightly cracking down on Kpods, but that attention should serve to open up the conversation, not narrow it. Kpods may be the latest concern, but they are part of a much larger and evolving landscape. The more we talk openly about the risks, the more we can prevent harm before it starts.
