The widow of world-renowned architect Bing Thom is taking her husband’s former firm, now known as Revery Architecture Inc., and the charitable foundation the couple founded to court, claiming she’s been unfairly stiffed on dividend payments and squeezed out of the charity since her husband’s death in October 2016.
Bonnie Patricia Koo Thom filed a petition in BC Supreme Court on March 11, naming Revery Architecture, the Transcendence Foundation, Shinobu Homma and Venelin Kokalov as respondents. Thom claims that after her husband’s death, she became the owner of “participating shares” in the company. In 2015, the company paid $100,000 in dividends on the shares, and $120,000 in 2016. However, a year later the company provided unaudited financial statements that showed the shares yielded $0 in dividends for 2017.
“Just as Mr. Thom had done before me, I expected to continue to receive dividends from the Company for years in which there were profits or surplus available,” Thom states in an affidavit. “I did not expect to be excluded from my late-husband’s company.”
When Bing Thom died, the company was profitable and was working on projects the world over including MacEwan University Allard Hall in Edmonton, Xiqu Centre in Hong Kong, the University of Chicago’s Francis and Rose Yuan Centre, as well as several projects in the Lower Mainland.
Bonnie Thom further claims that Homma and Kokalov tried to squeeze her out of the Transcendence Foundation, a charity the Thoms founded with a $2 million donation in 2013. In 2018, Kokalov and Homma proposed expelling Bonnie Thom as a director of the foundation because its “activities are primarily concerned with architecture and architectual matters, and Ms. Thom has no connection to the architectural community.”
However, Thom claims she believes Kokalov and Homma wanted to “seize control of the Foundation, and to otherwise benefit the Company.”
“I am very concerned that if I am not involved in the Foundation going foward, then its resources will be wrongly used to benefit the Company, or for some other inappropriate purpose, other than for the charitable purposes for which Mr. Thom and I established it,” her affidavit states.
Thom seeks declarations that the affairs of Revery Architecture and the Transcendence Foundation are being “conducted in a manner that is oppressive or unfairly prejudicial” toward her, and orders to remove Kokalov as a director and Homma as a member of the foundation.
The factual basis of Thom’s petition has not been tested in court and the respondents had not responded to the petition by press time.
