Betty Ang settles US consumer suit
The media-allergic billionaire Betty Ang of Monde Nissin is beginning to realize the legal minefields that her now global food empire has to navigate.
According to US media reports, Monde Nissin has just settled a deceptive marketing suit in California brought against its UK meat substitute subsidiary Quorn Foods about its product label information.
Under the class action settlement approved earlier this month by a California central district court judge, Quorn Foods will now disclose on its product labels that its meat substitute mycoprotein is a mold member of the fungi family – and not from mushrooms, truffles and morels, as the complaint alleged – which could cause an allergic reaction to some when ingested.
In addition to changing its labels, Quorn Foods has to pay up to $1.35 million in legal fees incurred by the California plaintiff.
Quorn Foods has also agreed to set up an initial settlement fund of $2.5 million to begin reimbursing consumers – for a maximum possible refund of $200 per customer – for the estimated $120 million the US customers have so far spent on Quorn products.
Mini apartments, maxi returns
Taipan Lucio Tan is subdividing his tony Eton Properties rental apartments into bedspaces in Hong Kong’s Deep Water Bay amid record property prices in the perennially housing-short Chinese territory.
The 18 apartments spread out in three low-rise blocks will be subdivided into 270 “nano-flats,” some as small as 80 square feet (about 7.4 sq.m, tighter than a carpark slot), a recent South China Morning Post report said.
The units will be rented out, mainly to young office workers, at HK$7,600 (about US$975) a month to HK$20,000 (about US$2,564) for a 120-sq. ft. spread (11.15 sq.m) with sea views.
According to the SCMP report, the monthly rent of HK$95 per sq ft for the nano-flats is 13 percent more than the current lease for serviced apartments operated by the Four Seasons Hotel in the Central district.
Each of the converted Eton Properties unit will come with its own bathroom and will have a weekly cleaning service.
Before the conversion, a 1,600-sq. ft. (148.6-sq.m) Eton apartment rented out for HK$98,000 (US$12,564), not including a monthly management fee of HK$8,570 (US$1,098), the SCMP report said.
Heard through the grapevine
As a final check on her fortitude, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez will meet with Patricia Cruz-Bautista before the House Committee on Justice begins deliberations Tuesday morning on the impeachment complaint against her husband, chairman Andres Bautista of the Commission on Elections.
Incidentally, the embattled Comelec chief now denies that he holds ownership interest in a San Francisco condo, contrary to the earlier claim of his US-based brother, Martin, that Andy co-owns the unit with their sister, ABS-CBN Foundation managing director Susan Afan.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com