Timmerton makes new legal move in suit against rice-cooker tycoon William Mong's estate

A Liberian-registered company which has been suing the executors of rice-cooker tycoon William Mong Man-wai's estate for about US$133 million (HK$1 billion) has taken another legal step.

In a writ, Timmerton Company asked the High Court to declare that a firm that holds 50 per cent of Shun Hing Holdings - one of Mong's many companies - is in fact holding the shares in trust for it.

Timmerton also asked that Huge Surplus Trust and its representative Huge Surplus Limited transfer to it the shareholding of Shun Hing Holdings and the profits derived from it.

The two should also hand over all necessary accounts and other documents, according to the court papers viewed yesterday.

Timmerton also asked for an injunction barring the two companies from disposing of the shares.

The move came after Mong's first wife, Serena Yang Hsueh-chi, their three daughters and two sons filed a writ last year, asking the court to declare they were entitled to the Huge Surplus Trust and its assets.

In April last year, Bank of East Asia chairman David Li Kwok-po and lawyer Vic Choi Fan-keung, the executors of Mong's estate, applied to the court for direction regarding various claims by Yang, Mong's daughter Cynthia Mong Sien-yee, Mong's widow Wong Pui-fan, and Timmerton.

In April this year, five companies linked to Mong, including Timmerton, sought HK$1 billion which they said they were owed from Mong's estate.

The companies said Mong took the money from Shun Hing Group without proper authority, or that they had extended it in the form of loans between 2002, the year of his high-profile divorce, and 2010, when he died.

Four firms that are part of the group - Shun Hing Holdings, Shun Hing Electronic Holdings, Shun Hing Electronic Trading, and Shun Hing Technology - said in the April writ that Mong owed them HK$941 million.

Timmerton put the debt at US$133 million.

Mong set up Shun Hing Hong in 1953 and used his father's business links with Panasonic to import Japanese goods. He went door to door to sell the first eight rice cookers.

He married Yang in 1958, and they divorced in 2002.