Keynote Address by Minister for Law Mr Edwin Tong SC at the IPAS Singapore Insolvency Conference 2026

21 October 2026 Posted in Speeches

Distinguished guests, colleagues and friends,

A. Opening

 1.                 Good morning.

 2.                 I am so happy to be back here among a fraternity that I used to work with and know so well. I count many of you in this room as amongst my closest friends, not just in my profession, but in my personal life as well. So, it is really great to be back here.

3.                 This morning, what I thought I would do is spend some time tracing Singapore’s international restructuring framework over the years. I know yesterday you had a long discussion on a number of different topics, including Pan-Electric (Pan-El). Later on, I will start with Pan-El, because it has been about 40 years since Pan-El and about 40 years since we introduced judicial management, which is something I am going to speak a bit more about.

4.                 I am going to trace through that, and then give you a sense of the enduring principles on which the framework has been built over the years, before giving you a sneak peek at some of the amendments that we will be introducing in the next couple of months to the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act (IRDA).

5.                 I think the key lesson to be learned as we trace through Singapore’s restructuring framework over the past four or five decades, has been the fact that we have moved from liquidation, orderly management and realisation of assets, to one which is very much premised on rescue, preserving value, and in some cases, creating new value as well.

6.                 That has to be the key driving force in this industry. If we are not able to create value, or at least preserve it, then I think it will be very difficult to succeed in large, cross-border international structurings.

7.                 Our framework, to which we will be making some changes \, will be designed to help us maintain the ethos of always trying to preserve, if not create, value.  

B. SGLaw200 – From inheritance to innovation

8.                 This year, Singapore commemorates 200 years of our modern legal system, which we call “SGLaw200”.

9.                 I see it as an opportunity to reflect on how far Singapore has come, and how much we have changed the framework that we inherited 200 years ago. We made it our own. We made it fit for purpose for our own industry, for the evolving economy that we have been confronted with, and tailored it to suit the needs of our country.

10.             The evolution of the restructuring framework very much follows that path.

11.             Our early framework was very much creditor-oriented. Where a company encountered financial difficulties, in most cases, the first port of call for secured creditors would be to appoint receivers to ringfence their secured assets, take control of them, and find ways to realise them at the best value. Never mind if the company thereafter went into liquidation.

12.             Where a company was insolvent, it would almost inevitably end up in a winding up, which provided the principal collective mechanism for realising and distributing its assets. More often than not, you would not get the full dollar back from such a liquidation.

13.             Gradually, schemes of arrangement became more in vogue. The framework has always been in our law books. But in the early days, it was not sufficient and did not have the range of flexibility and tools to give distressed companies breathing space, to facilitate new monies, to provide rescue financing, or indeed support complex restructurings, especially those with cross-border elements for which you might need a strong framework for a moratorium to ensure that the rest of the companies within the group would also fall in line.

14.             If you go back 40 years or so, Singapore’s economy was also very different then. We were still a growing nation and still developing. Singapore started as an entrepot economy, and then gradually came industrialisation, and a shift to higher value manufacturing and growth as a regional business centre.

15.             Today, we are one of the world’s biggest ports. Transhipment is a key part of our industry. You know that maritime and aviation are anchors of our industry and they are cross-border in nature.

16.             Necessarily, we have also become an international financial and business centre, with much of the capital coming into Singapore. Not just remaining in Singapore, but flowing through Singapore into other parts of the region as well. We see a lot more cross-border elements in almost every transaction that we do, and I think that is one of the broader lessons of SGLaw200.

17.             We have taken the framework, inherited from the UK common law system, including the way in which our Judiciary and laws are organised, but we have adapted and contextualised it very much for Singapore’s context. I think this is a lot more evident in the last 30 to 40 years or so, especially in the restructuring space.

18.             We also drew on international experience. We did not want to reinvent the wheel every time, so we looked at other jurisdictions, and in some cases, when it was appropriate, we copied and adapted their approaches to Singapore’s needs.

19.             But we also made deliberate choices to keep our laws in tandem with the economy that they were designed to serve.

20.             Ultimately, in my Ministry, as policymakers or lawmakers, that has been one of the key driving considerations – that we do not make the law for law’s legal sake, but we do it to ensure that the economy moves, that jobs are created, that MNCs feel that they can make investments with confidence, and that there is a framework for resolving disputes fairly.

21.             We drive IP innovation. We also look at Singapore as a neutral international dispute resolution hub. These are among the key objectives that our legal framework supports.

22.             Our restructuring framework today is very much a product of that evolution, shaped by the various economic shocks over the decades. Yesterday, you spoke about Pan-El, but there were also the Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.

23.             It is also shaped by the commercial challenges, innovations and new ideas that clients and corporates give us from actual cases. Even today, there are new payment modalities like crypto, Bitcoin and other new forms of currency.

24.             At the same time, I must say that our work is not done. The constant change and evolution have not always been about major reforms, but also about gradually shaping it and making it fitter for purpose and evolving with the times.

25.             If there is one thing that we can do well in Singapore, it is the fact that we can take feedback, process it, turn it into legislation, adapt it for our use, and get it passed in Parliament very quickly, if we need to.

26.             Let me start by tracing through the last few decades and how the framework has evolved. I will start, of course, with Pan-El, which you discussed yesterday.

C. From liquidation to corporate rescue

27.             Let me start with Pan-El in 1985, because that was an important turning point for Singapore. It was when we first started thinking about the rehabilitative and rescue processes that we needed to have in a restructuring framework. The crisis exposed weaknesses in our own financial system, as well as the limitations of our then insolvency framework. The tools were not just limited, but they also lacked sophistication.

28.             The experience of senior practitioners who had gone, through the process and debriefed the lawmakers at that point of time, provided very important learning points. We realised that we had to quickly introduce rescue provisions, to allow accountants, lawyers, bankers and the whole insolvency fraternity to have additional tools with which to deal with a similar crisis.

29.             Of course, as we know, many other similar crises did occur. So almost immediately after Pan-El, in 1987, there was a Second Reading of the Companies (Amendment) Bill. This was introduced by the late Dr Richard Hu, the then-Minister for Finance.

30.             It brought into Singapore, for the first time, the judicial management framework. The intention was, as Dr Hu explained in Parliament back then, to rescue viable businesses and prevent premature liquidation. Because if you did not have the tools to conduct a viable rescue operation, then inevitably, with liquidation, if not receivership, you would begin to gradually lose value.

31.             The key word from Dr Hu was to preserve value. He also cautioned against using the judicial management tool merely to delay the inevitable liquidation of companies that could not be saved. It is really meant for you to assess at the outset – can this company be rehabilitated through such an order? That is the basis on which the judicial management order would be made.

32.             The principle was clear – rescue businesses where there was value worth rescuing, but do not prolong the process where there was no realistic prospect of rehabilitation.

33.             Almost 40 years later, Dr Hu’s words still ring remarkably true even today, and I will speak more about this a bit later in my speech.

34.             The point is, the Pan-El crisis marked an important shift in our philosophy towards corporate rescue. Financial distress did not necessarily mean that the business was no longer viable. We know that, and you all have seen that.

35.             If you look at oil prices, they affect the shipping industry tremendously and they are very volatile. The Baltic index, for example, is volatile, so sometimes, it is a cash flow issue, and not an issue with the fundamental viability of the company or the industry itself.

36.             The company may well have a very sound underlying business and good assets, but an unsustainable debt burden, or temporary liquidity difficulties. In such a situation, premature liquidation or prolonged administration could destroy that value.

37.             On the other hand, a successful restructuring can preserve not just the business, but also jobs and productive capacity. For a small economy like Singapore, that is particularly important, and that has been one of the things that we thought about as well, as we looked at refining the restructuring framework.

38.             We are not such a large economy that we can afford to sustain repeated cycles of companies - where there is an unsustainable debt burden, even if the underlying business is strong, you liquidate and start again. That constant process will destroy value overall for the economy, and you do not want to see that.

39.             As Singapore grows, and in a mature economy like Singapore, business cycle ups and downs, ebbs and flows, will be inevitable. They will be recurring, and industries will go through periods of growth and decline.

40.             We need a strong restructuring framework to allow businesses to recover, and to absorb the shocks of that ebb and flow cycle.

D. Growth of Restructuring Practice

41.             Over the subsequent decades, Singapore's restructuring practice grew. Alongside the legal framework, we have seen growth in the number of professionals, the level of expertise and experience, and the expansion of firms. An industry gradually began to take shape. 

42.             The 1990s saw other major financial crises, which also helped to shape our thinking, chief among which was the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995 and then, a few years later, the Asian Financial Crisis.

43.             I was in my first year in practice, when Barings Bank collapsed. At that point in time, the call first came from SIMEX. I think only the older people in the room will remember what SIMEX even stands for. SIMEX was the entity that initiated the proceedings, eventually undertaking investigations, which discovered the “88888 account” that Nick Leeson used, and eventually putting Barings into interim judicial management at that point in time.

44.             It was a story in itself. The range of different activities – from extensive litigation to asset recovery across jurisdictions, and the complexity of the financial failure that we saw in Barings –all provided valuable lessons.

45.             The Asian Financial Crisis brought widespread corporate distress across the region. Garuda Indonesia, for example, restructured its debts through Singapore and England. That again exposed Singapore’s restructuring industry to the growing international reach of our framework. It was, maybe at that point in time, a foretaste of how we had great potential to grow in the space of international restructuring.

46.             By the 2000s, schemes of arrangement had become an increasingly important restructuring tool.

47.             In fact, an empirical study of Singapore schemes between 1996 and 2019 found that schemes were generally completed within 12 months, demonstrating their potential as an efficient mechanism for corporate debt restructuring.

48.             For example, we have seen cases like China Aviation Oil (CAO) which was successfully restructured through a scheme following substantial derivatives trading losses. That was in 2004.

49.             As Singapore became more internationally connected, our restructuring practice also took on an increasingly cross-border complexion.

50.             One example which I was involved in was Berlian Laju Tanker, one of the first entities dual listed in Indonesia and Singapore. It was a large Indonesian shipping group, with restructuring proceedings in the US, PKPU proceedings in Indonesia, and schemes of arrangement in Singapore. That was one of those cases which most of you here would have been involved in some capacity or other, because it was a large case.

51.             We accumulated experience from crises, coupled with landmark cases where sometimes we felt we did not have the tools to do something. One of the experiences for me personally in Berlian Laju Tanker was the inability for debtor-in-possession. The company was run by a family which had all the expertise and intricate knowledge of its markets, but there was an inability to put a strong debtor-in-possession framework in place to manage the restructuring. At that point in time, it was one of the limitations that I felt we had to overcome.

E. Building an international restructuring hub

52.             In the subsequent years, the Government established a couple of law reform committees specifically on insolvency and restructuring. These looked at modernising our insolvency laws, drawing on international best practices, and then adapting them to fit our purpose.

53.             In 2015, we established one of those committees, where we started looking at the potential of incorporating US Chapter 11 into our rulebooks. We felt that, at that point in time, it could provide us with a framework that was missing. We had receivership, we had judicial management, we had schemes of arrangement, but not quite a debtor-in-possession framework.  

54.             At the end of the day, the ambition for Singapore was clear – to become a centre of choice for complex international restructurings. That remains our goal today, and it is something that I will come back to later on.

55.             But I must say achieving this is about much more than just a legal framework, though the law and the tools are important.

56.             What we needed to do, which we began to develop in the last two to three decades in a substantial way, was to have a trusted judicial system that had the relevant expertise. Today, I think probably at no other time in the history of our Judiciary have we had such experienced judges who have been instrumental as insolvency practitioners themselves. They know the lay of the land, they know what it takes, and they are very practical. The jurisprudence coming out of our Supreme Court has not just been guiding lights for us, but also for many other jurisdictions.

57.             We have developed specialist professional expertise. Many of you in this room are lawyers, bankers, accountants – restructuring professionals in an industry in and of itself that needs to be developed. That is another very important growth lever as we look at our industry in Singapore.

58.             We also need access to rescue financing. We are not quite there yet. My desire is to try to have more distressed debt funds, for instance, relocate to Singapore – to have access to capital, be able to look at new monies, and have rescue financing as an additional tool to facilitate restructurings.

59.             The framework that I talked about, where we looked at introducing the US Chapter 11, was put to the test in 2016 and 2017. If you go back about 10 years, you will remember that was when there was a sharp fall in oil prices, and there was severe pressure on offshore service companies, shipping companies, and companies like Swiber and Ezra. The collapse of Hanjin Shipping, for example, also illustrated the difficulties that many Singapore companies in the shipping line were exposed to fluctuations and volatility.

60.             There was also Pacific Andes, which provided us with another learning point. The proceedings highlighted the territorial limitations of our own moratorium framework, and the importance of cross-border recognition and cooperation. Increasingly, as I mentioned, there are not many international restructurings that we can do or that we want to do, which do not have parallel proceedings elsewhere. So, the ability to have the moratorium apply in a broad fashion, was increasingly important.

61.             It was against this backdrop that the amendments to the Companies Act were introduced in 2017. We were all seated in New York in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York at 12 am Singapore time, when the new framework kicked in.

62.             The 2017 amendments allowed us to enhance our framework with tools modelled on aspects of US Chapter 11.  That included all the lessons that I spoke about a little earlier: stronger moratoria, rescue financing, pre-packaged schemes, and cross-class cramdown. These were all innovations we did not have before, but the learnings from previous experiences allowed us to do this.

63.             We also adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, and it provided us with a framework for recognising and cooperating with foreign insolvency proceedings. So you can see, this process and the various iterative versions of the law are something that, in Government, we cannot develop alone. Of course, at that time I was not in Government. I was a practitioner. But it is very much an interplay between the experiences that you have as insolvency professionals, giving us views on the difficulties and limitations that you encounter in your cases, both here as well as internationally, and then for us to take that on board, understand them, and decide how best to make our amendments work for the industry. When we can do that well, the industry will grow.

64.             In 2018, we passed the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act (IRDA). We consolidated everything into an omnibus statute. In 2017, there were so many of these shipping insolvencies that we felt we did not want to waste any more time, and so we put in the 2017 amendments quickly, so that the new provisions could be used immediately. So, we held back the IRDA and introduced the amendments to the Companies Act.

65.             But a year later, we passed the IRDA. It was the first time that Singapore's personal as well as corporate restructuring and insolvency laws were brought under one omnibus statute. It gave practitioners, creditors and the courts one comprehensive and cohesive framework from which to work.

66.             What is important from these experiences is that we did not just take the UK or the US position and transplant them in Singapore. We thought about it carefully, and sought a lot of ground feedback. In the end, we innovated by retaining the flexibility of schemes that we inherited from English law, but we also incorporated tools from US Chapter 11, that were then suitably adapted to Singapore's own circumstances.

67.             These were all very deliberate choices, balancing effective rescue mechanisms with safeguards for creditors. I remember one of the commentaries that came out post-2017 was whether Singapore was becoming pro creditor or pro debtor. It is not in our interest to be pro creditor or pro debtor because that assumes a zero-sum game. I do not see it that way. Whether you are a creditor or a debtor, and I have seen that from my own experience working across the table from many of my colleagues who might be debtor lawyers or creditor lawyers, our objective is the same: it is to realise the best value from the insolvency. So, it is not in our interest to favour one side or the other. It is about how we ensure that the tools that we equip the framework with will allow us to derive the best value from any restructuring.

68.             At the same time, we also complemented legislative reform with institutional development.

69.             In 2015, we set up the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). It now hears international restructuring and insolvency matters, drawing on specialist judicial expertise, including leading international judges, such as those from the US Bankruptcy Court. We also allowed foreign lawyers to have rights of audience at the SICC. Why? Because we recognise that in many large restructurings, there will be parallel proceedings, and we do not want arbitrage between one proceeding and another. We felt that having limited rights of audience for foreign lawyers to be able to appear in the SICC to explain the parallel proceedings overseas would be very helpful.

70.             In 2016, our Supreme Court hosted the inaugural meeting of the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN). The JIN has since become an important forum for dialogue and cooperation, recognising that there are a lot of cross border elements to most restructurings that we need to dovetail. The JIN develops guidelines, protocols and other practical tools to facilitate the coordination of cross-border proceedings.

71.             More recently, at the end of last year, the Council of ASEAN Chief Justices launched the ASEAN Model Framework for Communication and Cooperation Between ASEAN Courts in Cross-Border Insolvency Proceedings – bringing the ASEAN framework closer together and effectively allowing for a regional baseline framework that complements any bilateral arrangements, including those with Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. The framework in ASEAN allows Singapore, to have proceedings anchored here but, at the same time, to find recognition and cooperation elsewhere in ASEAN. That again is another tool that will be useful for cross-border restructuring proceedings domiciled and anchored in Singapore.

72.             Today, we can see the results of these efforts in a growing range of cases. Pacific International Lines successfully restructured through a pre-packaged scheme under Singapore's enhanced framework, subsequently making early and full repayment of its scheme debts. More recently, in Jetstar Asia, the SICC sanctioned a scheme facilitating an orderly wind-down of the airline, providing for full repayment of approved creditor claims, including those of approximately 194,000 consumers, through the creation of an administrative convenience class.

73.             These are two amongst many other examples, and some of which you might know better than I do. But I use these to illustrate that from one generation and one iteration to another, the framework has served us, but we need to continue to build on it. Our approach has always been to look ahead, to think of the next step, of what we need to do to refine the tools that we have.

F. The next bound – Responding to new economic realities

74.             The question that I will now transition to is: where do we go from here? Let me make a few observations about the operating landscape that we all find ourselves in.

75.             We all know that the global economic environment is closely tied to the global geopolitical environment, which means that we do not know what will happen. Tensions, trade barriers, trade fragmentation, tariffs, supply chain disruptions - all of these create uncertainty for businesses.

76.             But amidst the turmoil, I see opportunities for restructuring practitioners in this space, and let me explain why. Despite what you might see when you turn on the news, Asia continues to offer significant opportunities for growth and investment. The region that we find ourselves in remains an important engine of global growth, with expanding capital markets and increasingly international businesses. Singapore remains an attractive base for international businesses to operate. Take, for example, the number of foreign enterprises operating here, which has grown from about 50,000 in 2015 to over 90,000 in 2025.

77.                 In 10 years, we have almost doubled the number of foreign enterprises in Singapore, and many of them use Singapore as their corporate HQ and the nerve centre of operations. Capital flows into Singapore and also flows through Singapore, from which further investments are made. Our asset management industry reached S$6.7 trillion in assets under management in 2025, growing about 10% over the preceding year. More than three-quarters of these assets were sourced internationally. So much of this capital came from overseas.

78.             These developments and indicators have important implications for restructuring. As more international businesses and capital are anchored in Singapore, and financing structures become more sophisticated, the demand for effective restructuring solutions will also grow.

79.             If Singapore is to remain a leading international restructuring centre, we cannot stand still. We need to think of the next bound. In many ways, for me in Government, to think of what our competitors are doing and whether our framework remains fit for purpose, remains attractive, remains business-minded and easy to use.

80.             Last year, we set up the Committee to Enhance Singapore's Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency Regime. It is a committee to look at reforming the law and the committee proposed a further round of reforms. We consulted widely, kicking the tyres on the proposals quite substantially.

81.             Broadly speaking, we have accepted the recommendations. These reforms, unlike what we did in 2017 when we brought in an entirely new Chapter 11 framework, are not intended to be as watershed. They are more incremental in nature, but I think they are also important. This morning, I will end my speech by speaking about three of the reforms that we will be introducing in the coming months.

G. Strengthening our restructuring framework

82.             First, we intend to make cross-class cramdown more accessible and user-friendly.

83.             I mentioned that in 2017, we introduced cross-class cramdown into our rulebook. This allows the Court, subject to safeguards, to approve a restructuring even where a class of creditors has voted against it.

84.             At that time, we adopted a more cautious approach and inserted an overall majority requirement. We could have one class that holds out, but overall majority approval was needed.

85.             The mechanism, over the last almost ten years, has seen limited use since its introduction. We have studied it. We looked at why that was the case. Why has it not been utilised more widely?

86.             We felt that with the maturing of our own markets and industry, we wanted to refine the voting thresholds, and extend cross-class cramdown to shareholders as well, in appropriate circumstances.

87.             We think this is the right move to make, as it reflects the economic reality that, where a company is insolvent: shareholders may no longer have any residual economic interest in the business, but the current framework still allows them to obstruct a viable restructuring. At the same time, appropriate safeguards will remain important to ensure that affected stakeholders are treated fairly. We will introduce these provisions in a balanced way.

88.             Our objective is to: prevent unnecessary obstacles from frustrating viable restructurings, which would benefit the stakeholders collectively. It is about looking at the overall value that the restructuring can bring, rather than looking at whether there is a holdout class of creditors. The overriding consideration is to ensure that we maintain confidence in the fairness of the process.

89.             Second, I want to speak about amendments that we will be making to the judicial management framework to strengthen its rehabilitative focus.

90.             I spoke earlier about the introduction of judicial management in 1987, almost 40 years ago now, and Dr Richard Hu's explanation of its purpose to rescue viable businesses, while ensuring that the process was not used merely to delay the inevitable liquidation of companies that could not be saved anyway.

91.             Almost 40 years later, experience has shown us, through the cases and through a somewhat anecdotal but quite extensive survey of the cases that have come before the courts, that judicial management has not always fulfilled this purpose. Too often, it has become a precursor to liquidation, adding time, adding costs, without necessarily achieving more value or meaningful rehabilitation. This is unacceptable. This is not true to the original raison d’etre of judicial management. But these concerns, as we speak in 2026, are not new. As far back as 2013, the Insolvency Law Review Committee observed that judicial management had not established a particularly successful record in rehabilitating financially distressed companies.

92.             We therefore plan to introduce amendments that will refocus judicial management on its original rehabilitative purposes, based on the principles articulated by Dr Hu in 1987. Of course, we are also taking into account that we are now 40 years later – there is a different context, and perhaps different priorities.

93.             We will amend the IRDA to make clear that judicial management is a rehabilitative process. Some of the tools will include refinements to the requirements for when an application for judicial management is made. The applicant must explain: how the judicial management is expected to rehabilitate the company or its business, and the tangible benefits that it will bring as compared to placing the company into winding up. There must be an honest, bona fide belief that a judicial management order would aid rehabilitation of the company.

94.             Transition to liquidator:  In cases where judicial management does not successfully rehabilitate the company, this needs to be explained clearly when you are exiting from judicial management. There will be occasions when economic circumstances change. There will be supervening or unanticipated events, perhaps unanticipated that you could not have foreseen from the review at the time of application. We understand that. But what we want to do is that, when you exit, there must be an explanation of why. What, if any, supervening factors occurred? Which were not anticipated and led to the failure of the judicial management?

95.             If the judicial manager wishes to be appointed as liquidator, then there must be a clear basis explaining why that ought to be allowed, taking into account the circumstances in which the original application was made, any supervening events, and the circumstances of the judicial management.

96.             The spirit behind this is not about penalising honest attempts to rehabilitate companies that fail. We accept that. There will be a fair number that may still fail, but it ought not to be a situation where circumstances at the start do not drive one towards rehabilitation, but the company is put into judicial management anyway to try to manage the situation. Then, by virtue of that, the process becomes prolonged, costs rise, and the realisation of assets is not enhanced by judicial management.

97.             We know not every rescue will succeed, even where there might be good prospects a successful restructuring at the start. But it is about making sure that judicial management is pursued for the right reasons, with clear objectives and, importantly in this case, accountability for the outcomes that are sought.

98.             Third, we intend to strengthen cross-border cooperation even more. I mentioned earlier that, following the Pacific Andes example, amongst others, we introduced the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency.

99.             We now intend to adopt two further UNCITRAL Model Laws – on Enterprise Group Insolvency, and on the Recognition and Enforcement of Insolvency-Related Judgments.

100.          These will complement our existing adoption of the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency in 2017.

101.          The need for this is clear. If we want to realise our ambition to be a true international restructuring hub.

102.          Modern businesses increasingly operate as integrated international groups, but insolvency proceedings remain governed by national legal systems. Today, we see a lot of this.

103.          This then creates challenges for coordinating restructurings and preserving value across borders. The Model Law on Enterprise Group Insolvency will facilitate coordination across insolvency proceedings involving different companies within the same group. The Model Law on Insolvency-Related Judgments will facilitate recognition and enforcement of relevant judgments across borders, improving legal certainty and predictability, and removing arbitrage between different jurisdictions.

104.          Once implemented, Singapore will be amongst the first jurisdictions in the world to adopt all three UNCITRAL Model Laws relating to insolvency.

105.          This reflects our deep commitment to remaining at the forefront of international restructuring and insolvency law – not only adopting best practices, but really contributing to its development and helping to shape a more predictable and effective framework for cross-border restructuring.

106.          Those are three amendments we plan to make, amongst others, and we propose to introduce them for First Reading in the coming months, either later this year or sometime early next year.

H. Building our restructuring community and ecosystem

107.          Finally, as I earlier mentioned, having the right laws is only part of the equation.

108.          Their effectiveness ultimately depends on the users, the professionals who use them, who can marshal the tools and build on them, advise clients, and achieve outcomes.

109.          Modern restructuring requires a combination of legal, financial as well as increasingly, strong operational expertise. Lawyers, insolvency practitioners, accountants, bankers, financial advisers and turnaround specialists – each of you brings different skills to the table.

110.          This is also the thinking behind our proposal to formalise the optional appointment of restructuring officers in schemes of arrangement. There may be circumstances where additional independent oversight or expertise is sought, particularly in certain specialist industries. This would help to facilitate the process and strengthen creditor confidence.

111.          The proposed framework will allow the Court to appoint a restructuring officer, with the flexibility to tailor the roles and functions of the restructuring officer to the circumstances of the case. So it is quite flexible and can be quite curated to the particular industry and the needs of that particular company. This can be done without necessarily displacing management.

112.          More broadly, we want to build a restructuring ecosystem where specialist skills can be brought together to find commercially workable solutions.

113.          Finally, on IPAS (Insolvency Practitioners Association of Singapore). Organisations such as IPAS – and I understand that representatives from its Malaysian counterpart, IPAM (Insolvency Practitioners Association of Malaysia) are also here –play an important role in bringing this community together. Having the insolvency conference on an annual basis, where we meet together and network, is critically important. It helps to strengthen and raise professional standards, share best practices, and develop specialist capabilities.

114.          As Singapore's restructuring market grows, and there are many reasons why I believe it will grow, we must continue to deepen that expertise. Not just in technical law, but perhaps more importantly, in business turnaround, restructuring finance, how we access new capital, new monies, valuations and cross-border coordination.

115.          Importantly, we need to measure our success not simply by the number of cases that we can bring or the number of appointments or the number of proceedings in court, but by the value that we can preserve or create. It is about creating value, and being a jurisdiction that can create value through large-scale restructuring that will set us apart. That value is created through rehabilitating viable businesses, improving creditor recoveries or enabling assets and capital to be redeployed productively.

116.          This is how we build a restructuring profession that is not only technically excellent, but also commercially relevant and, in these times, importantly, internationally competitive as well. When I travel and talk to counterparts, they are looking at Singapore and how they can advance their own framework to compete with us. It is our role in Government to ensure that we keep our framework up-to-date, fit-for-purpose, easy to use, and evolving with your business needs.

117.          But each of you also needs to have the skill sets to operate within that framework, and we need to work together on this. If you come across cases that you find hard to handle, but there are innovations elsewhere in other jurisdictions that we can learn from, share them with us. Because if they are good enough, relevant and workable, they can be quickly put into our rulebooks.

I. Conclusion

118.          Let me conclude with where I started: SGLaw200.

119.          For over two centuries, we have taken the laws that we have inherited, and we have very much nuanced it and shaped them into what Singapore needs. We have developed a legal framework that supports our growth as an international business and financial centre.

120.          I think our restructuring and insolvency practice and regime, and our industry, very much reflect that journey from a liquidation and realisation-oriented system to one that facilitates corporate rescue and highly complex international restructurings.

121.          We are at the forefront of these matters. Our legal and financial capabilities are second to none. What we need now is to have a growth mindset and commercial drive to do the research in Singapore.

122.          And so our work is not done.

123.          We must continue to innovate and respond to changing commercial needs. In the coming years, there will continue to be upheavals, turmoil, ups and downs. But it is really in the hardest of times that we can forge the strongest and most sustainable laws and systems that will endure for time to come.

124.          Indeed, our belief in Government is that any mature international financial centre, which Singapore aspires to be, cannot thrive without an effective restructuring and insolvency regime to support it through the various economic cycles.

125.          So the work that all of you do is important, not just to the businesses, creditors and clients that you serve and advise, but overall, to Singapore's economic resilience and competitiveness, and the growth of our economy.

126.          I very much look forward to hearing from you from time to time on reforms or suggestions. This is going to be a journey that we will continue to walk together with the industry. Occasions like this, where IPAS brings all of us together, are a great opportunity and platform for us to network, interact, and exchange best practices.

127.          On that note, I wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you again for having me here.

Last updated on 21 October 2026