On 1 November 2021, the legal profession in Singapore welcomed the bill tabled in the Singapore Parliament to allow for conditional fee arrangements (“CFAs”) in certain types of legal proceedings.

In the seminal case of Korea Asset Management v Daewoo Singapore Pte Ltd (in liquidation) [2004] 1 SLR(R) 671 (“Korea Asset Management”), the Honourable Judicial Commissioner V K Rajah (as he then was) (“JC Rajah”) laid down a non-exhaustive list of factors to be considered in an application under Sections 299(2) or 262(3) of the Companies Act (Cap. 50 1994 Rev Ed) (“CA”) (pari materia to Sections 170(2) and 133(1) of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (No. 40 of 2018) (“IRDA”)) for leave to commence or continue an action or proceedings against a company in liquidation. In such applications, decisions at various levels of the Singapore courts have cited and employed the factors in Korea Asset Management with a seemingly common reluctance to broaden or revise the factors. Following the recent developments in Australia, has the time come for our Singapore courts to revisit this position?