A judicial manager’s core duty is to ensure that one or more statutory objectives of judicial management is fulfilled:
(a) Survival of the company or its undertaking as a going concern;
(b) Approval of a compromise / arrangement under section 210 of the Companies Act 1967 or section 71 of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (IRDA); or
(c) A more advantageous realisation than on a winding up. Along with this, the judicial manager must perform functions in the interests of the company’s creditors as a whole, as enshrined in section 89(2) of the IRDA.
Pursuant to section 104(1)(a) of the IRDA, the judicial manager of a company may at any time be removed from office by order of the court.
The Singapore Court of Appeal in Tay Lak Khoon v Tan Wei Cheong (as Judicial Manager of USP Group Ltd) and Others [2025] 2 SLR 118 has now consolidated the removal standard under section 104(1)(a) of the IRDA into a single test: whether removal is in the real and substantial interests of the judicial management, having regard to its statutory purposes. This subsumes, rather than sits alongside, the two-stage formulation previously discussed in DB International Trust (Singapore) Ltd v Medora Xerxes Jamshid and another [2023] 5 SLR 773 (read our previous article here) and Petroships Investment Pte Ltd v Wealthplus Pte Ltd [2018] 3 SLR 687 and embeds the court’s discretion within that balance.
This update discusses the key issues examined in the Court of Appeal’s decision.
If you would like information or assistance on the above or any other area of law, you may wish to contact the Partner at WongPartnership whom you normally work with or any of the following Partners:
Joel CHNG
Partner – Restructuring & Insolvency and Special Situations Advisory
d +65 6517 8707
e joel.chng@wongpartnership.com
Click here to view Joel’s CV.
Daniel LIU
Partner – Restructuring & Insolvency and Special Situations Advisory
d +65 6416 2470
e zhaoxiang.liu@wongpartnership.com
Click here to view Daniel’s CV.