Zaid Ibrahim & Co

On the court record

Zaid Ibrahim & Co is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) span company, banking, insolvency, contract and civil procedure. In the corporate field it has appeared in minority-oppression litigation under section 346 of the Companies Act 2016, testing whether a company was family-owned or a quasi-partnership where the articles contained no family-specific provisions, a professional-qualification requirement was inconsistent with family ownership, and governance was board-centric with a majority of independent non-family directors. Its insolvency and banking work includes winding-up petitions under sections 465 and 466 of the Companies Act 2016 founded on an unsatisfied judgment debt where no bona fide dispute arose, and an order for sale where a bank had continued to accept instalment payments after the borrower was adjudged bankrupt and after issuing a notice of recall.

At the apex level the firm has argued a fortuna injunction where the debt in issue was subject to an arbitration clause, engaging the threshold test for a stay, dismissal or fortuna injunction in such cases, the relationship between arbitration and winding up, and the interpretation of statutes under section 17A of the Interpretation Acts 1948 and 1976. Its civil-procedure work includes an application to set aside a judgment debtor summons and whether a challenge to it, after leave to execute a judgment after the lapse of six years had been granted under Order 46 Rule 2, amounted to an impermissible collateral attack on a subsisting leave order.

In the investment-agreement dispute the firm tested whether an acknowledgment of the financial risks of an investment implied that repayment was contingent on the venture's performance, a question of construction bearing on whether the sums advanced were recoverable as a debt. The reported profile is that of a commercial-litigation practice engaged with shareholder oppression and the quasi-partnership, winding-up and secured-lending enforcement, the interaction of arbitration and insolvency at the apex court, and the execution and collateral-attack questions that arise in enforcing judgments, serving corporate and financial clients across the civil courts.