Evergreen founder’s son-in-law named new company chairman

Photo: © Yali Shi | Dreamstime.com

Cheng Shen-chi, son-in-law of Evergreen Marine Corporation’s late founder, Chang Yung-Fa, has been appointed chairman of the group’s holding company, Evergreen International.

It’s a move seen as an attempt to quell the infighting among Dr Chang’s four sons for control over the group.

Mr Cheng, formerly chairman of Taiwanese banking group Mega Financial Holdings, was appointed at a board meeting on Wednesday.

He said many of his family trusted him to serve as chairman and added that he hoped to use his position as an elder to reconcile his four brothers-in-law.

Mr Cheng stressed that Dr Chang’s last wish was for “brotherly unity” among his four sons, now at loggerheads.

Dr Chang, who died in January 2016, had reportedly left a handwritten will made in December 2014, leaving his fortune and businesses to Chang Kuo-wei, his only son with his second wife. This prompted his older sons, from his first marriage, to challenge the will’s validity – it also named Chang Kuo-wei as the group’s next chairman.

Amid a legal battle, Dr Chang’s three older sons engineered the removal of Chang Kuo-wei from the group’s aviation arm, EVA Airways, in January 2016, but two years later, he made his comeback, establishing StarLux Airlines.

In March 2018, a Taiwanese court ruled that Dr Chang had been lucid when he made his will, and that Mr Chang Kuo-wei was entitled to nearly $464m.