In Re Superyield Holdings Ltd ([2000] 2 HKC 90) a father and son each had one of the two issued shares in SH Ltd. SH Ltd, in turn, held one of the two issued shares in SC Ltd (along with another company LKR Ltd which was essentially owned and controlled by the son). SC Ltd owned a residential property (‘the property’). The question was whether the son was solely beneficially entitled to the property. Recorder Robert Kotewall SC found that he was. The son argued that since the property was bought using a combination of the son’s own funds and a loan to the company that the son had arranged, he could rely on the presumption of a resulting trust. The court seems rather to have found for the son on the basis of the father and son’s actual intention. The judge thought that where the trust rested on actual intention then the presumption of resulting trust had no part to play (at 111). He accepted that SH Ltd was in substance the son’s company and that the father was only involved as a formality to satisfy the then requirements of the Companies Ordinance. The father had been one of the joint guarantors of the loan to SC Ltd used to buy the property and it was possible to argue that this should be treated as a contribution to the purchase price by the father. This would depend upon underlying intention. In any case, the presumption of advancement would apply so that this contribution should be presumed to be a gift from father to son.
Michael Lower
