Making it big: here's how

Most of Singapore who read the newspapers today must be agogged by the asset split ordered by the High Court. Yeo Chong Lin has been ordered to give one third of his assets to his ex-wife. That amounts to a cool S$40.7 million.

Mr Yeo claims his assets to be only S$52 million whereas the High Court has put them as S$115 million. Yet whichever is the real figure, the self-made multi-millionaire sure didn't waste the last 58 years, as shown by the following extracted from court documents:

"The parties had only primary school education. The husband’s first job was as a hawker’s assistant. In 1952, he joined the Singapore Harbour Board (subsequently the Port of Singapore Authority (“PSA”)) as a tally clerk. In 1970, the husband set up a firm known as Sea Well Industrial and Ship Supply Company (“Swissco”) which was a sole proprietorship carrying on business as a ship-chandler. He left the PSA in 1970 to concentrate on Swissco and it gradually expanded. In November 1970, it was converted into a private limited company called Swissco Pte Ltd.


The husband’s first office was rented from the wife’s elder brother and it was a small space in Chow House in Robinson Road. There was no telephone line in the office and the husband used the home telephone line to receive purchase orders from his customers and to communicate with them. At that time, the wife would take these telephone calls and relay messages to the husband. In the initial stages of the business, there were occasions when the husband took the wife along to dine with his customers. On other occasions, she took the customers’ wives out for sightseeing and shopping.

According to the wife, apart from entertaining customers, she also accompanied the husband on his trips to deliver goods. Additionally, she often cooked and delivered lunch meals to the office staff. The wife also asserted that in the late 1960s, she had borrowed $20,000 from her mother and passed the sum to the husband to assist him in meeting the start up costs for the business. The husband was also able to obtain favourable credit terms from a company known as Wah Hong Pte Ltd which was a major ship supplier belonging to the wife’s father because of his relationship with the wife."