SMU Lexicon: Reversing a Bankrupt’s Transfer

Reading Time: 8 minutesIntroduction Let’s say you are an investor. You enter a joint investment with a friend and lend him $100,000. Sadly, the joint venture fails, and to make matters worse, your friend has gone bankrupt and transferred half of your money to his wife. Can you get your money back? Unfortunately, once he is declared bankrupt, […]

SMU Lexicon: Shareholders vs Mismanagement by Directors – The power of a Statutory Derivative Action

Reading Time: 7 minutesIntroduction Let’s say you are a minority shareholder. The company is not doing well, and you believe the company’s directors have committed financial mismanagement, or maybe committed fraud. To make matters worse, the other majority shareholders are in cahoots with these directors, so your concerns are dismissed quickly at every meeting. Usually, a company would […]

A Guide to Listing a SPAC on the SGX (Part 2)

Reading Time: 4 minutesSpecial Purpose Acquisition Companies (“SPACs“) are companies, at the point of their proposed listing on the Singapore Exchange (“SGX“), without an operating history, business or assets generating revenues. The listing is undertaken primarily to raise capital to acquire a business or businesses, as the case may be, and complete a business combination. In this article, […]

A Guide to Listing a SPAC on the SGX (Part 1) Asia Law Network
A Guide to Listing a SPAC on the SGX (Part 1)

Reading Time: 4 minutesSpecial Purpose Acquisition Companies (“SPACs“) are companies, at the point of their proposed listing on the Singapore Exchange (“SGX“), without an operating history, business or assets generating revenues. The listing is undertaken primarily to raise capital to acquire a business or businesses, as the case may be, and complete a business combination.  In this article, […]

Enforceability of Non-Standard Form Contracts

Reading Time: 6 minutesIntroduction Electronic communications are omnipresent. Apart from texting our friends via apps like Telegram or WhatsApp, and discussing work through emails, we also transact using electronic means – for example, by buying items off Taobao, Shopee, or Lazada, just one of the many e-commerce platforms available. This article discusses whether agreements formed over messaging apps […]

SMU Lexicon: Surviving Flow-down Liability for Liquidated Damages: A Guide for Subcontractors

Reading Time: 7 minutesIntroduction The construction sector in Singapore was valued at S$33.4 billion in 2019.[1] This booming industry is expected to remain strong in 2020, due to the increasing complexity in the design of buildings, such as the rising emphasis on prefabrication technology.[2] Construction projects are complex, and require many different skills and expertise. Any one contractor […]

Know Your Lawyer: Joshua Tan, Partner at Aquinas Law Alliance, Believes That Law Is A Business

Reading Time: 6 minutesLaw is a business.  This is one of the first things Joshua shares with me, just three minutes into our interview.  Two or three decades earlier, this matter-of-fact utterance would have raised eyebrows and blood pressures, and sent senior lawyers within earshot spewing diatribes in defence of the sanctity of the legal profession.  But to […]

home based baking business
What Kind Of Businesses Can I Legally Run From My Home Address?

Reading Time: 3 minutesAccording to Lianhe Wanbao and Mothership, a 75-year-old woman was arrested on February 4 for operating a mahjong parlour in her HDB flat. 10 other women aged between 22 and 88 were also arrested. The accused has allegedly operated the mahjong parlour out of her Teban Gardens flat in Jurong for the past eight years.  […]

SMU Lexicon: What if you didn’t write it down? Verbal promises in business contracts.

Reading Time: 6 minutesI.               Introduction Business negotiations can be lengthy. In the course of negotiations, parties might make a verbal promise to do or not do something. There might also be emails recording the promise or showing that there were verbal negotiations. But if the promise does not end up in a written contract, can you hold the other […]