Scion of UOB’s Wee family buys mansion for S$39.5 million

A SCION of the Wee family, Singapore’s richest banking dynasty, is buying a S$39.5 million mansion, taking advantage of a lull in the high-end real estate market.

Grant Wee, the youngest child of UOB chief executive officer Wee Ee Cheong, is buying the Good Class Bungalow (GCB) at Ford Avenue, according to property filings lodged at end-March seen by Bloomberg News.

The house is co-owned by Choo Chiau Beng, whose former roles include being chief executive officer of the infrastructure giant now known as Keppel and Singapore’s non-resident ambassador in Brazil. He acquired the house, which spans more than 19,500 square feet, in 2007, the records show.

The sale comes after Singapore’s high-end property market saw a tepid 2023, dented by a major money laundering scandal and high interest rates. Last year’s transactions in the GCB market were the lowest since 1996 when data became available, according to a recent estimate by CBRE Group.

Still, the class of property, which number about 2,800, are highly coveted by the ultra-rich. The March transaction price stood at more than double that of a slightly larger mansion in the area, which was sold in 2019 for S$17 million.

The transaction also comes amid renewed attention on where the Wee family’s US$10.6 billion fortune will be dispersed, after the death of its patriarch Wee Cho Yaw in February. Grant Wee’s father, Wee Ee Cheong, became the richest of the late Wee’s children, with a net worth of US$4.6 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates.

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Grant Wee, a former consultant at Boston Consulting Group, now runs a wellness club in Singapore, and like Wee Ee Cheong’s two other sons, is not actively involved in UOB’s banking business.

Grant Wee did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

Choo was chief executive of Keppel between 2009 and 2013, when it still owned the world’s biggest builder of oil rigs, a unit he also led before his CEO tenure. His time at Keppel was marred by a scandal over illegal payments the company made to officials of Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro.

Choo did not respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn.

The unit eventually agreed to pay US$422 million to end a US probe into the illegal payments. Keppel, backed by state investor Temasek Holdings, sold off its oil rig unit in a major restructuring last year. The same year, Singapore’s anti-graft agency announced a decision not to charge unnamed executives allegedly involved in the case, citing insufficient evidence. BLOOMBERG