About the project

The Singapore Academy of Law’s Law Reform Committee considered the basis on which and the procedures by which the following matters ought to be fixed or determined by the court:

• Whether the legislative requirement for a third party (apart from the company in question and the insolvency practitioner) to approve and review the private liquidators’ fees should also cover those of judicial managers, receivers and managers (appointed by the court or otherwise), and/or scheme administrators for schemes of arrangement under section 210 of the Companies Act (Chapter 50, 1994 Revised Edition; now the 2006 Revised Edition).
• What the appropriate procedure would be for approving the fees of such insolvency practitioners, including whether the present procedure of taxation by the Registrar of the High Court of private liquidators’ fees is preferable.
• Whether guidelines should be issued as to what fees are recoverable and for what items of work, including the form in which bills are to be presented, and if so, what the content of those guidelines should be.

The Committee made these recommendations:

• Legislative requirements should be extended to cover judicial managers and receivers and managers appointed by orders of court, but receivers and managers appointed pursuant to an instrument and scheme administrators appointed pursuant to section 210 of the Companies Act should be excluded.
• The existing practice of the Registrar of the High Court assessing liquidators’ remuneration by taxation should be adopted, but it may be preferable to constitute a panel of insolvency specialists who can act as technical assessors to assist the Registrar in assessing the appropriate level of remuneration.
• It would be beneficial to adopt guidelines governing the fees that may be charged by insolvency practitioners. Moreover, practitioners should furnish adequate explanations and details of the tasks they have carried out and the complexity and quantum of work involved.

Project status: Completed

• The report was published in October 2005.
• The report was cited by the High Court in Kao Chai-Chau Linda v Fong Wai Lyn Carolyn [2015] SGHC 260, [2016] 1 Singapore Law Reports [SLR] 21 in the appendix at paragraph A.36.

Areas of law

◾ Insolvency law

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Last updated 7 June 2019