Abstract:
The making of a judicial management order over a company subject to Singapore’s asset-freezing sanctions, or overseas sanctions, poses unique challenges for Singapore-based insolvency practitioners and Singapore insolvency lawyers. Three recent English High Court judgments – Re CargoLogicAir Ltd [2022] EWHC 3316 (Ch), Re Sberbank (CIB) UK Ltd [2022] EWHC 1059 (Ch) and Re VTB Capital plc [2022] BCC 1049 – present potential solutions to these problems. Singapore’s practitioners and courts may well find creative ways to adapt those solutions to fit Singapore’s insolvency law and practice. This article considers three such solutions: first, the effect of pending licence applications for exemptions from sanctions on the making of judicial management orders; second, whether sanctioned companies in judicial management can use the Official Receiver’s or Official Assignee’s bank accounts in case commercial banks refuse to serve them; and third, the important role that judicial managers, as officers of the court, play in ensuring that sanctioned companies comply with sanctions.