Yong & Rakan Rakan

On the court record

A banking, insolvency and security-enforcement practice engaging the appointment of liquidators under the Companies Act 2016, a bank's duty of care to non-customers, and stays of order-for-sale proceedings.

Yong & Rakan Rakan is recorded in the corpus in banking, insolvency and commercial litigation before the High Court. In one matter the firm acted for the respondent in an application to appoint a private liquidator in substitution for the Official Receiver under sections 482 and 521 of the Companies Act 2016, where the court weighed the wishes of the creditors — voting by value — against those of the contributories, in the context of an abandoned development project whose project-specific needs and drastically reduced asset value were said to require specialist expertise and forensic investigation, the creditors' choice prevailing as the primary aggrieved parties. In a second matter the firm acted for a third party in a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012, where the question was whether a bank owed a duty of care to a person who was not its customer but who was a director and shareholder of a corporate customer; the court engaged the requirement of sufficient legal proximity, the doctrine of separate legal entity, the proper-plaintiff rule and the rule against the recovery of reflective loss, holding that no duty of care was owed to the individual in his personal capacity. In a third matter the firm acted for the plaintiff bank in relation to an order for sale, where a defendant, after filing affidavits in opposition and requesting a higher reserve price, brought a fresh civil suit and sought a stay of the proceedings to fix the auction date and reserve price, the question being whether there were any special circumstances justifying a stay. Across these matters the firm is recorded engaged with the intersection of banking, security enforcement and corporate insolvency. In the liquidator matter the court gave weight to the creditors' wishes by value over those of the contributories, treating the creditors as the primary aggrieved parties in an abandoned development whose asset value had drastically fallen.