Raj Shankar

On the court record

Raj Shankar is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters are argued before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), where it has appeared for the appellant in a group of insolvency appeals arising from a single company in liquidation. The appeals concern the avoidance provisions at the heart of the collective insolvency regime. They turn on allegations of undue preference, premised on voluntary settlements said to have been made without valuable consideration and not in good faith, and on fraudulent preference, and they include an application for a validation order in respect of a payment rendered void because it was made after the presentation of the winding-up petition.

These questions go to the integrity of the insolvency process: whether pre-liquidation dispositions unfairly preferred one creditor over the general body of creditors and must be unwound, and whether a post-petition payment should nonetheless be validated so as to stand. The firm's consistent appearance as appellant across the connected appeals, brought by the company in liquidation against various counterparties and against the Director General of Insolvency in that capacity, reflects sustained work carrying the liquidator's or the company's position through the appellate court in a substantial insolvency.

In these appeals the firm's task was to persuade the appellate court that pre-liquidation settlements should be unwound as preferences, or conversely that a post-petition payment should be validated, on the evidence of consideration and good faith. The reported profile is that of a litigation practice engaged with corporate insolvency at the appellate level, and in particular with the preference and validation questions that determine which payments and settlements made around the onset of winding up will be allowed to stand and which will be set aside for the benefit of creditors generally. The firm's caseload demonstrates concentrated involvement in the avoidance and validation machinery of the Companies Act, an area of practice demanding close command of the insolvency provisions and of the evidence bearing on consideration and good faith.