-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cherie Hearts under receivership By Hoe Yeen Nie | Posted: 25 March 2011 0008 hrs
SINGAPORE : Singapore's largest private childcare provider, Cherie Hearts, has run into financial trouble.
However, parents need not worry because childcare operations are not affected.
Its main holding company, Cherie Hearts Group International, was put under receivership on Tuesday after defaulting on a loan from its parent company, G8 Education.
The Australian firm's managing director, Chris Scott, told Channel NewsAsia that the loan had grown over time, but declined to give numbers, saying the case could go to the courts.
Chua Sui Tong, a financial disputes expert at law firm WongPartnership, said receivership is an insolvency procedure, and is often a last resort to recover a debt.
He added that it was a "pretty drastic step" that suggests talks between the two parties had broken down.
Channel NewsAsia understands that there were some contractual obligations under the original acquisition contract, signed in October 2010, that Cherie Hearts could not meet.
When a company enters into receivership, typically senior management staff will have their duties suspended, and company accounts would be frozen.
But the appointed receivers, KordaMenthaNeo, would only say that Dr Sam Yap and Dr Gurchran Singh, founders of Cherie Hearts, were assisting them with examinations.
Cherie Hearts owns 18 centres in Singapore and has another 52 franchised outlets.
There are also 18 centres in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea, and earlier this year, Cherie Hearts had expressed intentions to double that number in a few years.
G8 Education said expansion plans in Singapore will go ahead and operations at the child care centres here will not be affected, to the relief of some parents.
One, who only wanted to be identified as "Jennifer", said she was not too worried about lost fees as she pays them on a monthly basis.
"My greatest concern is the welfare of the child, because if I have to find another childcare centre on a sudden, urgent basis, it would mean disrupting a schedule they're already used to," she said.
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