CFO who rewrote his own targets loses $200,000 bonus claim

A Singapore court has dismissed a chief financial officer's claim for two years of unpaid performance bonuses after he admitted to reinterpreting his own targets because he believed he knew better than his employer.

District Judge Jonathan Ng Pang Ern ruled on 1 September that Ngai Nai Ping Jango had failed to satisfy the agreed criteria for his annual performance bonus and was therefore not entitled to the $200,000 he claimed from his former employer, Banshing Industrial Co (Pte) Ltd.

Under his employment contract, Ngai was entitled to a $100,000 bonus each year on the condition that he met criteria to be agreed during his probation period. 

Those criteria were eventually communicated in June 2023, when the company's director, Alvin Cheng Kaway, specified that Ngai was required to deliver a seven-worksheet Excel-based financial valuation model drawn from a university-level finance textbook.

Failing to meet the bonus criteria

Ngai never delivered the model. Instead, he developed what he described as an ROI framework and capital expenditure policy, and argued this satisfied the spirit of what was required. 

At trial, however, he admitted he had not built the model in accordance with the agreed specifications. 

"I knew better the valuation model than Alvin," he told the court. "I can deliver a model that can deliver the results he expects. But not the format or the template design."

The judge rejected that reasoning. 

"It was not open to the Claimant to unilaterally reinterpret the criteria for the APB," he wrote, adding that the criteria had been described at trial as "extremely specific." 

Ngai also testified at one point that he deserved the bonus simply for being an "exceptional CFO," a position the judge said bore "no relation whatsoever" to the agreed criteria.

Ngai separately claimed that the company's founder, Cheng Po Hing Albert, had orally promised the bonuses would be paid once the company's cash flow improved. 

But Albert denied making any such promise, saying he had stayed silent when Ngai raised the bonus issue because he was not involved in day-to-day operations. 

The judge found Albert's evidence more credible, noting that Ngai had produced no documentary record of the alleged promises despite an active WeChat exchange between the two men.

All claims, including breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and estoppel by representation, were dismissed. 

"The Claimant has found himself in his present predicament because he chose to reimagine the criteria for the APB on his own terms. Had he simply delivered the Seven Worksheets as the Defendant had required, he might have found himself in different circumstances today," the judge said. 

"In this sense, he was the author of his own predicament."