SINGAPORE – The couple who founded The Sloane Clinic — which has branches in Singapore and Malaysia — has left the aesthetic and plastic surgery chain, and is currently embroiled in a legal tussle with the management over the use of the chain’s name, TODAY has learnt.

The upheaval has also seen a spate of doctors resigning from the chain, which has contributed to the shutting down of its Ion Orchard clinic last month. The closure of the clinic came after the Chip Bee Gardens branch ceased operations in the middle of last year as part of the clinic’s consolidation efforts. Another clinic in Jalan Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, had also closed around the turn of 2017.

Meanwhile, its three remaining branches — two in Singapore, located at Chevron House in Raffles Place and Novena Medical Centre, and one in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur — are open for business.

In October last year, The Sloane Clinic’s shareholders — Eastlife and Maxglobe, which are subsidiaries of China-based Asia Pacific Medical Group, and Singapore-based Healthtrends Holdings and Healthtrends Specialists — filed a lawsuit against Dr Kenneth Lee and Dr Low Chai Ling, the husband-and-wife team who founded the clinic in 2003, as well as seven other individuals.

The Sloane Clinic’s shareholders are represented by law firm Morgan Lewis Stamford, while the defendants are represented by TSMP Law Corporation.

Both Dr Lee and Dr Low, who last held the positions of medical directors at the chain, left The Sloane Clinic in September last year to set up their own aesthetic and plastic surgery clinic called SW1, which is located at Paragon Medical Centre. After their resignations, four other doctors walked out as well.

Currently, the three remaining clinics in Singapore and Malaysia have a total of 12 employees, including four doctors.

Responding to TODAY’s queries, a spokesperson for The Sloane Clinic said it has “started court proceedings against some of those parties”. “At the centre of the dispute is their attempt to use the Sloane Clinic name for themselves. We are suing to prevent such usage,” the spokesperson said.

Declining to comment on the lawsuit, Dr Low nevertheless told TODAY that she and her husband had stayed on at The Sloane Clinic for an additional year after their contracts ended in 2016. “After that, we both felt that it was time for us to move on and start something new, as the direction we wanted to head in was different from what the owners had in mind,” she said.

In 2008, Healthtrends Group bought over The Sloane Clinic, and three years later, Asia Pacific Medical Group acquired a majority stake of 51 per cent in the chain. Healthtrends Group as well as other investors hold the remaining stakes.

It was reported in 2016 that China Medical (International) Group (CMIG) wanted to buy a majority stake in the chain. However, the proposed deal fell through in January after CMIG failed to get approval from its shareholders.

Speaking to TODAY, Dr Billy Hardie – who is the managing director at The Sloane Clinic and the founder of Healthtrends Group – said the decision to close its Chip Bee Gardens branch was because the clinic there “was quite run down”.

The chain did not see a point in renovating the premises, and was in the process of consolidating its business in order to remain competitive, he added.

However, Dr Hardie acknowledged that the resignations of the doctors at the Ion Orchard branch had hastened its closure, but he declined to reveal the reasons why the doctors quit, citing the ongoing lawsuit.

In the aftermath of the closures, the chain had to address queries from “a handful” of customers, Dr Hardie said. But he stressed that it is now “business as usual”.