In Singapore the initials of Raffles Town Club RTC is surprisingly recognizable - though it is merely one out of many social clubs in the city, it has been in the news so often that people who have never gone there would know about it nevertheless; further, with 19000 members, who bring their family members and guests there, the number who have visited it at some time or other must constitute a large total.

The Club opened in 2000, when I happened to be overseas, and I started using its facilities only after 2001.  I also hold membership in Singapore Recration Club and till its recent demise, Europa Club, after which I joined Guild House. Why so many? Not sure. I am not actually a socially inclined person and dont usually deploy the various networking opportunities I get in work and other situations. I think I just suffer from a clubphilia neurosis, which was prevalent in Singapore during the 90s and went terminal in the new millenium, though its residual  thrashing is still reverberating even now, as I shall explain shortly.

A club here can be a "members' club", meaning that the assets are jointly owned by the members, or a "propriatory club", meaning that the assets are owned by a company which offers facilities for use by members under a membership contract. A club can be a "country club", which usually means "golf club" here, or a "town club" or "social club", which does not have golf courses but usually provides restaurants, pub, disco, pool, gym, bowling, etc.

Clubs in USA and Europe can be highly exclusive; to become a member you need first to be introduced by current ones, and get voted in by a committee (sometimes the whole membership) where a small minority can block entry (voting against is often called "blackballing", in that it was customory to use red balls for yes and black balls for no). In Singapore this is rarely adopted in clubs; many clubs have an open register, meaning you can join simply by paying an entrance fee; it is also possible to pay a current member to transfer his/her membership to you, and club membership transfers operate like an investment market with prices rising and falling depending on demand and supply. Club memberships became, like apartments and shares, a speculative instrument.

For a somewhat obscure reason, club memberships became highly desirable in the 90s. For example, Singapore Recreation Club membership, which I obtained by paying an entrance fee of $15K in a 1994 recruitment campaign, was for a while changing hands at $50K, and that was during the period when it did not even have a club house - the old one was torn down for re-development, and members were using some improvised facilities in a temporary rented location.

To meet the demand, the government land office allocated a land parcel on the periphery of the tourist district for building a new club. The 30-year lease was acquired by Europa Ltd, a company that operated a chain of discos and pubs around Singapore (including Europa Club) for the whopping bid of $100M. However, it promply collected $500M in entrance fees by accepting 18000 members at $28K each. Even after paying for the lease charge, income tax and construction/furnishing cost, it was left with nearly $200M of cash. In the mean time, the market for club memberships went into a nosedive: with the new Raffles Town Club membership body of 18000, almost anyone that wants a club membership in Singapore already has one, and buying demand shrank to almost nil; the rapid fall of stock markets world wide in 2000-2002 together with the doldrum of the local property market, made things worse.

At first, Raffles Town Club members were merely puzzled about the low market price for transfers; they had been given the impression that the club would be a plush and exclusive one as indicated in the recruitment campaign handouts. A quarrel among the management people in Europa Ltd, leading to a lawsuit, soon revealed the actual situation: not only is the club much less exclusive than they had reason to believe, they also found that the people in charge gave themselves generous deals using the large surplus, generous enough, in fact, for the Taxation Office to pursuit the people who benefited from these deals and ask them to pay due income tax. With the negative publicity, both of the quarrelling management groups left and a new management took over.

With widespread indignation, some members decided to start a collective lawsuit asking for the cancellation of their membership contract and refund of their entrance fees. This group eventually grew to about 3000. After four years of court proceedings, the final judgement required the club to repay each plaintiff $3000 in compensation for their less than satisfactory deal. However, though the award was specific to the members involved in the collective suit, it was clear that the remaining members would expect to get the same deal, but before they got organized to start yet another law suit, the club management took the initiatve to transform the whole matter: it regarded all members who joined during the initial recruitment campaign as creditors being owed $3000 each, but asked them to accept a scheme of arrangement whereby the payment could be made over a couple of years and only partially in cash, so that the payouts could be covered with regular cashflow. For the people not involved in the collective lawsuit, this was a trouble free windfall, and they easily outvoted the group that were in the lawsuit. Hence, the scheme became binding on all entitled members.

But it is not over; the club has started a new law suit against the original management group, whose actions it regards as the cause of  the problems that led to the legal and financial arrangements. I do not know how long this one will take,## but hope to report the next episode to you when details are available.

About the club itself, it is indeed well appointed and very plush. I used to go there regularly to drink a wine and read International Herald Tribune. I no longer do this because IHT is now like Straits Times - read the headline and I already know what the article is going to say. But never mind, it is nice to have a few club memberships.

## a judgement was finally handed down in 2010 clearing the then management group: whatever their other objectives might have been and side effects they might have generated, their actions were not meant to damage the club, and the club's charges were rejected; because there were also some counter suits launched and previously ruled, the losing side was not required to bear the whole legal cost of the case, and the judge ask the parties to try to reach a settlement on the cost issue first. I believe the matter is still outstanding as of 12/7/10.

The pines

A short drive down Steven's Road from RTC sits the Pines club; its own webpage says

http://www.thepines.com.sg/web/main.aspx?ID=9e916751-3959-47eb-a68f-6759d79861ee

The Pines was first established in 1980 and was formally known as the “Pinetree Town and Country Club”. Back in those days, it was known as the most prestigious club in Singapore, tempting many wealthy businessmen, ladies of leisure, professionals and their families into purchasing the Club Membership. At its peak, the Club had almost 5,000 principal members, well surpassing the expectation of its management.

After 22 years of being the most talk-about-club in town, and in the business sector the club was sold to Exklusiv Resorts Pte Ltd, Member of Group Exklusiv, for S$101 million. The Club was subsequently renamed “The Pines”

"22 years of being the most talk-about-club in town"? while it was still under construction in the 80s, paid up members complained about delays in getting the club ready, but that was just teething trouble; what really put it into news as towards the end of the period, when it was found that the club owner, a Mr Chng, had mortgaged the property to finance toll road construction in China, from which he found it difficult to extract a return. While the club was worth rescuing - unlike RTC, it has perpetual title to the land instead of a temporary lease - members were not: they had to pay a new entrance fee (though discounted for being old members) to become members of Pines.

Golf Clubs

Golf is a time consuming sport; in Singapore it is also an expensive one - in addition to purchasing the equipment, one has to take lessons and obtain what is known as a Proficiency Certificate just to be allowed onto the courses, and of course one has to pay greens fees or hold a club membership, with some club memberships costing a hundred thousand dollars (US) on the transfer market.

Curiously, until the early 90s, it used to be cheap to join a golf club, if you belong in the right circles; clubs occupied land around reservoirs, army firing ranges or airport, which prevent their use as residences or office buildings, and land leases payments were nominal, as were club entrance fees if you are admitted, but memberships could not be sold to others.

However, golf clubs with transferrable memberships began to appear in the early 80s, and soon the system became standard, because government bodies in charge of the various pieces of golf club land began to demand market value leases (as well as controlling votes on management committees). To fund such payments, clubs had to levy payments from existing members, but in return allow memberships to be sold (which then requires a transfer fee payment).

In short, golf club memberships changed from privilege to commodity; and clubs ceased to be social enclaves.