Latest news with #Swire
The Star
4 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Hong Kong branch of Singaporean 1880 club in liquidation with HK$20 million debt
The Hong Kong branch of a Singapore-based private club that closed after less than a year in business is undergoing liquidation with debts of about HK$20 million (US$2.5 million), former employees have said. Financial difficulties forced 1880 Hong Kong, located at Two Taikoo Place in Quarry Bay, to shut its doors on Friday last week, leaving 100 employees without pay for two months and some members angered by sales made shortly before the closure. It also owed rent to its landlord, Swire Properties. Two former employees told the Post on Tuesday that the cash-strapped club had gone into liquidation, blaming the failure on the company's poor financial planning and governance. Both said that the landlord made a substantial capital investment in the fixed assets, while the club only had to take care of operations. One said that Swire's capital investment amounted to more than HK$170 million. The club, which opened on November 8 last year, occupied four floors offering event spaces, a gym with spa facilities, four restaurants, a cocktail bar and a sports bar. Each member had to pay a joining fee of about HK$24,000 and a monthly subscription fee of HK$1,300, or HK$14,000 for a full year, according to the founding member rates seen by the Post. 'Still, the company could not run the club properly because it did not understand how Hong Kong works and did no due diligence. It just assumed the city was going to be the same as Singapore,' one middle-ranking employee said. 'It was suffering from cash-flow problems from day one.' He said the senior management made a string of poor decisions, including hiring more than a dozen staff members for each of their five kitchens long before the restaurants opened and ordering tens of thousands of cake packaging materials for an eatery that did not sell cakes. 'But when an employee at a lower rank tried to speak up, they did not listen,' he said. 'November was the last month I received my salary on time.' The company had not managed to pay all of its staff on time since December last year, with the landlord returning a deposit at one point to help it pay wages, but priority was given to junior employees. He also said the club had struggled to pay its suppliers since February and had asked to settle the payments in instalments. But it failed to honour the arrangement, placing immense pressure on frontline staff, he added. 'In the end, we were only paying those whom we desperately needed to keep the club in business,' the middle-ranking employee said. In the first week of May, founder Marc Nicolson held a town hall meeting to reassure all staff that a 'very big investor' was coming to save the business, he said. Despite being in a dire financial situation, the club kept recruiting new members, with the last one joining in mid-May, just about two weeks before the closure. The same employee said the company's Singaporean leadership had sent in support before the opening in November, but they stopped in January this year. He said he believed the company still owed staff members about HK$4 million in unpaid wages and around HK$15 million to suppliers and its landlord. Another employee, who was transferred from Singapore to the Hong Kong club in August, said he was owed more than HK$100,000 in unpaid wages dating back to April, as well as payment in lieu of notice. Comparing the operation of the clubs in Singapore and Hong Kong, he said the one in the city state had a much smaller floor area but was exclusive to its 2,000 members. But the Hong Kong branch had a larger floor size and was partly open to the public, making it far less attractive to sign up as a member. He said that all the restaurants had failed to hit their targets, even after a downward adjustment, with the amount being made by the food outlets 'definitely below HK$1 million monthly'. He also said the company did not pay suppliers for months, and they had only accepted cash on delivery since March. 'I just pray they find the money to pay the staff because they really believed in the company, even when wages were delayed for weeks and came to work until the last day. Some of us even took a loan to come to work,' he said. 'They could have been honest about it and told us the truth in the last two, three months ... it's really unethical for them to do this.' He said that returning to Singapore was difficult because it would mean breaking his lease and losing his deposit. The head office would not cover his loss either because he had signed a new contract with the Hong Kong branch, he added. The group previously announced plans to expand to Bali, with the construction of a resort largely completed before the project was shut down late last year. A spokeswoman for Swire said the landlord was unable to disclose any financial details related to specific tenants. Hong Kong's Labour Department and the Customs and Excise Department said they had received complaints and were following up on the matter. The Consumer Council said it had yet to receive any complaints related to the club. The Post has reached out to the club and its founder for comment.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Patriot's Cove 7th annual ‘Fish for the Fallen'
NOXEN, WYOMING COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A local nonprofit in Wyoming County is hosting an annual fishing event that honors fallen heroes. 28/22 News stopped by the organization ahead of Friday's event to find out more about how the community can get involved. A place of healing for veterans and first responders. Patriot's Cove in Noxen serves those who have served. 'Cove means life… Whether we come from a life of service in the military or as first responders, but each one of us, we all have struggles. This is a place of hope,' said Jeff Swire, founder/president of Patriot's Cove. Founder and U.S. Army veteran Jeff Swire runs the non-profit. Local urologist weighs in on former president's diagnosis Its quiet grounds will soon be filled with fly fishermen, all for the seventh annual Fish for the Fallen tournament Friday. Eight veterans and gold star families will be honored, including Private Adam Marion, who lost his life in a second deployment to Iraq. 'I personally wasn't on that deployment, but my former unit was there, so knowing that we can honor him and his family for his sacrifice, he was a wonderful young man. It's unfortunate that these young men and women have to give their lives, but it's what we do to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy,' said Swire. The vets will leave their permanent mark through memorial stones in its walk of honor. Swire says he couldn't do this without the help of volunteers and community donations. 100% of donations go into improving the cove, such as this newest walkway that makes the grounds more handicap accessible. Its mission goes beyond fly fishing as they continue to expand the grounds and add accessible amenities to help as many first responders and veterans as possible. 'Our underwater observatory and hopefully even a new lodge somewhere down in the next few years, so we can actually house paralyzed veterans,' explained Swire. If you'd like to donate or volunteer with Patriot's Cove ahead of its Fish for the Fallen tournament on Friday, you can visit Fish for the Fallen or donate to Patriot's Cove. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Herald Scotland
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Shame about the 'Scottish' accents: Lockerbie TV drama comes a cropper
*** Less than six months since Sky Atlantic's Lockerbie: A Search for Truth comes another drama, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, starting on BBC One this Sunday. One can only speculate that the reason for both arriving so close together was the forthcoming - and now postponed - trial in the US of a Libyan man accused of making the bomb. Sky's A Search for Truth was based on the book by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 people murdered when Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988. While Colin Firth turned in a moving and nuanced performance as Swire, the story became lost in a fog of warring theories. The BBC drama - to be released globally by Netflix at a later date - is a more straightforward police procedural. The cast is international, but this is very much a Scottish affair. 'Scottish soil. Scottish evidence. Scottish procedure,' growls Peter Mullan's police chief to one of the FBI agents desperate to take over the investigation. Read more Mullan might as well have added, 'Scottish cast' to the list. From Mullan and Tony Curran to Phyllis Logan and Kevin McKidd, there can't have been many who did not answer the call to arms. That Scottishness is reflected well in Jonathan Lee's plainspoken dialogue, as in the exchange between a grieving teenager and the police officer who takes the local lad under his wing. 'How's it going?' asks the copper. 'Fine, aye,' comes the reply. Scotland in general and Lockerbie in particular come across well, with local people receiving their due for preserving the victims' effects and looking after grieving relatives. Alas, there is a downside to all this 'putting a kilt on it', and yes, it's the accent thing. Again. With so many actual Scots around, those acting the part have a tougher task than usual. Here's looking at you, Connor Swindells, playing DI Ed McCusker. At any other time, the star of SAS Rogue Heroes might have got away with what is to the untrained ear a perfectly honourable attempt at a Glaswegian detective. Here, however, it's the accent equivalent of Les Dawson playing the piano. Swindells is not the only one to come a cropper, though this time it's not a Scottish accent to blame. Eddie Marsan, playing the American explosives expert Tom Thurman, has an accent that wanders from Texas to Tooting in the same sentence. Why put actors and viewers through such grief? Better to stick with your own accent than mangle someone else's. Lockerbie: A Search for Truth was on earlier this year (Image: free) Clever location choices make up for the low budget (so much for those Netflix big bucks terrestrial broadcasters dream about). The lack of cash pays off in other ways, most notably in opening scenes that are less graphic, and not as intrusive, as those in the Swire drama. Star of the piece is our man Mullan, a class act on any continent. Here, he comes with a bonus in the shape of Patrick J Adams playing FBI agent Dick Marquise. The star of Suits and the force of acting nature that is Mullan make a dream team. The BBC drama is the superior piece of the two, but whether it adds anything to our understanding is a question that cannot be answered till the case is closed and everyone accepts the outcome. That, however, is not a date you will find on any calendar. The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 9pm, Sunday 18 May
The Guardian
16-02-2025
- The Guardian
‘You don't see the trauma until suddenly you do': Lockerbie bombing's lasting impact on a ‘normal little town'
At the end of a row of tidy red brick bungalows in the Scottish town of Lockerbie is an empty plot, carefully landscaped now as a memorial garden. Two red tartan ribbons, tied on a leafless branch perhaps in private remembrance, flutter in a wintry gust. Eleven of the street's residents died when the wing section of Pan Am 103 crashed into Sherwood Crescent with the force of a meteorite on 21 December 1988, gouging a 30-foot crater on this spot. The impact was such that some bodies were never recovered. This once anonymous street was recreated in meticulous detail for the filming of the Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which was first screened last month and stars Oscar winner Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed when a bomb exploded on the Pan Am flight from London bound for New York. Although the drama has been widely praised, some relatives of the 270 people who lost their lives in what remains the UK's deadliest terrorist atrocity have questioned the need for such graphic depictions of the immediate aftermath. A spokesperson for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group described it as 'tragedy porn' to the Hollywood news site Deadline while, closer to home, a Lockerbie resident who lost her sister and brother-in-law wrote in the Annandale Herald: 'I don't need to be reminded about the terrible scene that night.' But for a generation born after 1988, this series may be their first exposure to the tangle of legal proceedings, conspiracy theories and international controversy that has become synonymous with the name of one small town in the south of Scotland. With a second dramatisation airing on BBC One and Netflix later this year, a new BBC Scotland documentary, and the trial of the alleged bomb-maker starting in the US in May, Lockerbie is likely to remain in the spotlight this year, willingly or otherwise. 'It's the most normal little town in the world,' says the Rev Frances Henderson, minister at Lochmaben and Lockerbie Churches, 'with a strong community, and people are just living their lives.' 'You don't see the trauma until suddenly you do. It's there, being carried and dealt with, a trauma that is part of their lives and has shaped the last decades.' Henderson has not watched the Colin Firth series herself: 'Not because I object to it but because I feel I'd have to psyche myself up to it. 'I think most people feel it's been done respectfully but neither have I heard of many watching it because it's too real. For those who weren't there, who may be too young to remember, it's perhaps useful, but not for those who were there.' The Sky Atlantic series was based on Swire's investigations into the bombing. He and many supporters have argued consistently for the innocence of Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder. Swire believes al-Megrahi, who was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after a diagnosis of terminal cancer and died in 2011 in Tripoli, was framed to deflect attention from Iranian and Syrian responsibility. This is rejected as conspiracy theory by US victims' relatives, who criticised the series for misrepresenting the trial and portraying al-Megrahi as 'an innocent man that should be empathised with'. Swire and other UK relatives continue to demand a public inquiry into the failure to take seriously or make public warnings that an attack on a Pan Am flight was imminent, while in May, another Libyan, 72-year-old Abu Agila Masud, will go on trial in Washington, accused of building the bomb that brought down the flight. He denies all charges. 'There has been so much written about the trial and various conspiracy theories, but no one has ever spoken to me about any of that as a constituent,' says Colin Smyth, Scottish Labour MSP for the region. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'People of Lockerbie didn't choose for their town to be known for this, but they took their responsibility to the victims very seriously from the first night – like the couple who found a young man in their field and didn't want to leave him so stood vigil until dawn, or the man who scooped up the body of a toddler and drove them into town so they weren't left in the cold and wet.' 'For decades they have welcomed people with open arms as the families of the victims continue to visit their loved ones' last resting place. Those relationships have sustained – you hear of relatives staying at family homes in Lockerbie even now.' Those relationships are woven through the generations, thanks to the enduring scholarship programme between Lockerbie Academy and Syracuse University, New York, which lost 35 students in the disaster. This Saturday Lori Carnochan, chair of Tundergarth Kirks Trust, took another group of Syracuse students around the church and memorial room to the east of the town, where the plane's nose cone came to rest. 'Visitors have this image in their head of Lockerbie and they're all so pleasantly surprised – it's not a sombre place. It's a thriving, vibrant community, full of positivity and life, a fantastic place to raise a family.' Carnochan is leading plans to create a legacy museum at Tundergarth: 'Children and young people need to understand the significance of the worst terrorist attack ever to have happened in the UK and the impact it had not only here in Lockerbie but all over the world, the changes that came about in aviation security and safety because of it.' 'It's so important for them to learn about the incredible acts of loving humanity by the people of Lockerbie in the aftermath, like the women who washed and distributed 11,000 items of personal artefacts and clothing back to the families that otherwise would have been destroyed. 'It's a very difficult thing for many in the town to have to live with – it's widely known many people here have some form of PTSD because of the attack, yet they still open their hearts and homes in the way that they did 36 years ago.'
