The city-state's new court will compete directly with aspiring arbitration centres like Toronto
By Brian Burton
SINGAPORE IS in the process of setting up a new division of its High Court to act as an international commercial court, says Doug Harrison, a litigator in the Toronto office of Stikeman Elliott LLP.
Based on its 20-plus years of success in international commercial arbitration, Singapore is looking to expand into mediation and litigation, offering a full range of commercial court services to compete with leading international dispute-resolution centres in London and Hong Kong. This initiative could also compete with Toronto's efforts to become a recognized international arbitration centre, Harrison said.
Singapore has one steering committee for the development of a full commercial court and another to set up a legal centre specifically for intellectual property disputes. Lawyers familiar with the process have said Singapore is actively recruiting internationally recognized judges, and the full commercial court could be launched before the end of 2014.
Harrison said Singapore would be capitalizing on its identity as an independent city-state and, thus, “a more neutral venue” for regional disputes than Hong Kong, now part of the People's Republic of China. The plan would also obviously benefit from the burgeoning economic growth of China, India and the region as a whole, he said.
“Also, the Chinese arbitration centres are a little bit in flux right now,” Harrison observed. A recent schism between the Chinese arbitration centre in Beijing and those in Shanghai and Shenzhen has led to unease among international business leaders about how disputes will be handled there, he said.
Singapore will need a network of bilateral and court-to-court agreements with other nations in order to ensure the enforceability of its court's rulings, but Harrison said the city-state already has agreements with many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and this could fairly easily be expanded, based on its international reputation.
Another potential attraction of the Singapore court is the idea of making proceedings confidential. Harrison called this “very interesting” and an effort to make litigation similar to arbitration. While it could be attractive to parties in dispute, it would be at odds with conventional thinking on the transparency of justice.
“That may be just blue-sky thinking, at this point,” he said. He noted that Delaware's experiment with confidential judicial arbitration of business disputes was ended last autumn, when the United States Appeals Court ruled confidential arbitration a violation of First Amendment rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Harrison said he sees the new Singapore commercial court as part of the ongoing “Big Shift” of business from Hong Kong to Singapore that has proceeded since China took control of Hong Kong in 1999.
He said the new court will help to further secure Singapore's place as a leading business and financial centre and create a new revenue stream for an increasingly wealthy city. He noted that commercial court fees are often linked to amounts at issue in the cases heard there.
By Brian Burton
SINGAPORE IS in the process of setting up a new division of its High Court to act as an international commercial court, says Doug Harrison, a litigator in the Toronto office of Stikeman Elliott LLP.
Based on its 20-plus years of success in international commercial arbitration, Singapore is looking to expand into mediation and litigation, offering a full range of commercial court services to compete with leading international dispute-resolution centres in London and Hong Kong. This initiative could also compete with Toronto's efforts to become a recognized international arbitration centre, Harrison said.
Singapore has one steering committee for the development of a full commercial court and another to set up a legal centre specifically for intellectual property disputes. Lawyers familiar with the process have said Singapore is actively recruiting internationally recognized judges, and the full commercial court could be launched before the end of 2014.
Harrison said Singapore would be capitalizing on its identity as an independent city-state and, thus, “a more neutral venue” for regional disputes than Hong Kong, now part of the People's Republic of China. The plan would also obviously benefit from the burgeoning economic growth of China, India and the region as a whole, he said.
“Also, the Chinese arbitration centres are a little bit in flux right now,” Harrison observed. A recent schism between the Chinese arbitration centre in Beijing and those in Shanghai and Shenzhen has led to unease among international business leaders about how disputes will be handled there, he said.
Singapore will need a network of bilateral and court-to-court agreements with other nations in order to ensure the enforceability of its court's rulings, but Harrison said the city-state already has agreements with many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and this could fairly easily be expanded, based on its international reputation.
Another potential attraction of the Singapore court is the idea of making proceedings confidential. Harrison called this “very interesting” and an effort to make litigation similar to arbitration. While it could be attractive to parties in dispute, it would be at odds with conventional thinking on the transparency of justice.
“That may be just blue-sky thinking, at this point,” he said. He noted that Delaware's experiment with confidential judicial arbitration of business disputes was ended last autumn, when the United States Appeals Court ruled confidential arbitration a violation of First Amendment rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Harrison said he sees the new Singapore commercial court as part of the ongoing “Big Shift” of business from Hong Kong to Singapore that has proceeded since China took control of Hong Kong in 1999.
He said the new court will help to further secure Singapore's place as a leading business and financial centre and create a new revenue stream for an increasingly wealthy city. He noted that commercial court fees are often linked to amounts at issue in the cases heard there.
