Kwong Chiew Ee

On the court record

Kwong Chiew Ee appears in the reported corpus as a banking, insolvency and commercial litigator, with a notable line in cross-border enforcement and corporate restructuring across the High Court and Court of Appeal. In one matter she was engaged where a summary judgment obtained in the Singapore courts had been registered by the Kuala Lumpur High Court under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgments Act 1958, and the judgment debtor applied to stay execution while a counterclaim by another party remained pending. Her banking practice appears in a dispute over a banker's duty of care to its customer — customer due diligence, account reactivation, the handling of garnishee proceedings and an extended Quincecare-type duty to avert fraud — where the question was whether the bank had breached its express and implied contractual duties of reasonable care and skill.

Her corporate-restructuring work is prominent. She was engaged as respondent's counsel in scheme-of-arrangement matters under section 366 of the Companies Act 2016, where the reported reasons address the legislative purpose of a scheme, the classification of creditors by their rights rather than their interests, the requirement of full and frank disclosure before a convening order will issue, and, at the Court of Appeal, whether the Act prohibits consecutive fresh applications for convening orders and the requirements for a restraining order under section 368. Her reported matters also include a land order of sale made by the Land Administrator under section 263(1) of the National Land Code together with a judicial-review point on a blanket approval under section 49(1)(b) of the Banking and Financial Institutions Act 1989, and an appeal, allowed, against the forfeiture of seized property to the Government under sections 28L and 61 of the anti-money-laundering legislation. The reported matters mark her as counsel across banking, insolvency, restructuring and enforcement. Across these reported decisions her work spans the enforcement of foreign judgments, the duties banks owe their customers and the restructuring and winding up of companies, a combination that places her firmly at the commercial and insolvency end of the litigation spectrum.