Alvin Yong Advocates

On the court record

Alvin Yong Advocates is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters are heard largely in the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan), together with the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and are concentrated in company and shareholder disputes and questions of title. In every reported matter the firm appeared for the respondent, defending decisions reached below. A significant group of appeals arose from a single corporate group and turned on whether there had been a contravention of section 132D of the Companies Act, so that the issuance of impugned shares in several companies was null and void, with the court also asked whether it ought to unwind the allotments. That litigation engaged the duties of directors on the issuance of shares and the remedies available where the statutory constraints on allotment are breached. The appeals were bound up with the personal-representative and estate interests of a deceased shareholder and with the several companies within the group, and required the court to weigh whether the impugned share issuances should be declared null and void and set aside, and what consequential orders were needed to restore the parties to their proper positions.

The firm has also appeared in a property and title dispute concerning competing claims between original purchasers and a subsequent purchaser to the same properties, where the developer had gone into liquidation and the court weighed constructive trusts, whether the purchase price had to be paid in full, and the equitable doctrine of laches and questions of limitation, with a cross-appeal in play, and required the court to decide which competing purchaser held the better title where the developer had become insolvent. The reported profile is that of an appellate-focused practice engaged in high-value corporate and land litigation, where the recurring questions are the validity of share issues under the Companies Act, the priorities between competing purchasers, and the equitable principles that govern relief. The firm's consistent position as respondent reflects work sustaining favourable outcomes through the appellate hierarchy to the apex court.