Hong Kong’s high court yesterday cleared the way for billionaire brothers Thomas and Raymond Kwok to ask the board of the city’s biggest property developer to depose their elder brother from his job as chairman and chief executive.

The power struggle between the three brothers, who have run Sun Hung Kai Properties for the past 18 years, boiled over into public last week when elder brother Walter obtained a last-minute court order that temporarily prevented the board of directors from voting on his fate.