When the debts of a bankrupt or an insolvent company are denominated in a foreign currency, the Official Assignee or liquidator would need to convert the debt into Singapore dollars when making a distribution to creditors.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (Amendment) Bill ("MAS Bill") and the Financial Institutions (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill ("FI Bill") were tabled before Parliament on 4 February 2013.

The appellant ("Mdm Cheo") commenced divorce proceedings against her hubsand (the "bankrupt") two weeks after he had been served a statutory demand by a bank to pay around US$8.67 million.

The companies at the heart of these two cases were Jurong Technologies Industrial Corporation Ltd ("JTIC") and its wholly owned subsidiary Jurong Hi-Tech Industries Pte Ltd ("JHTI") (collectively, the "Companies").

The Singapore Court of Appeal recently issued a landmark decision on schemes of arrangement in the case of The Royal Bank of Scotland NV & Ors v TT International Limited [2012] SGCA 9.

The appellant was made bankrupt in January 1998. Some time after she had been made bankrupt, her sister passed away.

In establishing that a debtor had unfairly preferred one creditor over others, it was not necessary to show that the debtor knew that it was insolvent or imminently insolvent, and further that the pressure on a debtor to pay one creditor only vitiates the desire to prefer if there were good commercial reasons for the payment to be made: -- Jurong Technologies Industrial Corp Ltd (under judicial management) v Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank BA [2010] SGHC 357 (Singapore, High Court, 9 December 2010)

Where a plaintiff sought to claw-back payments made to the defendant on the basis that they amounted to an unfair preference, or a transaction at an undervalue, or had been made with intent to defraud, held that such a claim could not be arbitrated but had to be dealt with in court proceedings:

Where a contract contains a non-assignment clause, a liquidator may not, as part of his liquidation of an insolvent company's assets, assign the contract to a third party without first seeking the consent of the contracting counterparty:

-- Owners of Strata Plan 5290 v CGS & Co Pty Ltd (Australia, New South Wales, Court of Appeal, 30 June 2011)

Payments made by a company to its holding company shortly before its winding up were held to have amounted to an unfair preference of the holding company and could be clawed-back from it