22 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – JUNE 2023 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM Based in Vietnam, Truong Trong Nghia has been in legal practice for 41 years, 25 of those years spent with YKVN, where he has been a partner since 2008. His practice focuses on arbitration, corporate, M&A, labour and employment, foreign direct investment and litigation. Eximbank engaged a YKVN team led by Nghia in one of the first 16 precedents approved by the Supreme People’s Court that resolved the issues of sales and purchase and L/C agreements in the country. He also acted as the lead counsel in Vietnam’s first divorce case involving spousal common property division between two famous names in the local business agenda. Davinder Singh, SC is the executive chairman at Davinder Singh Chambers. He focuses on dispute resolution and international arbitration, which he practices from his base in Singapore. Singh has been in law practice for 40 years, the last four at his current eponymous firm. Vijay Kumar Singh is a senior partner at S&A Law Offices, a firm he has been with for more than two decades and where he focuses on litigation and arbitration. Singh has been in legal practice for more than 23 years. Based in Jakarta, Melati Siregar is a senior partner at UMBRA – Strategic Legal Solutions. Siregar has been in the legal profession for 19 years and at the current firm for almost four, after stints at ExxonMobil, Baker McKenzie, SSEK Legal Consultants and Bank International Indonesia. Siregar’s practice covers complex litigation, alternative dispute resolutions, and industrial relations disputes. Among many other noteworthy cases that Melati has acted in, she led UMBRA’s litigation and alternative dispute resolution team in representing the Indonesian branch of a multinational securities company in an unprecedented “mass arbitration” at LAPS SJK. She successfully persuaded the tribunal to award the claimants only 5 percent of the claimed amount on an ex aequo et bono basis. She also represented a KUMAR KANAGASINGAM Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill SANJEEV KAPOOR Khaitan & Co. CHARANYA LAKSHMIKUMARAN Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan TRUONG TRONG NGHIA YKVN DAVINDER SINGH, SC Davinder Singh Chambers Can you share some of your most notable practice highlights from the past year? What were some of the key cases or achievements that stood out for you as a litigator? We recently secured a US$926 million judgment for a former Prime Minister of Georgia against Credit Suisse Trust for breach of trust leading to losses in an investment portfolio worth over US$1 billion. The case received extensive media coverage worldwide including Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN and the Wall Street Journal. I also succeeded in winning US$146 million in damages for Shanghai Electric, a Chinese government-linked energy group, in a SIAC dispute with India’s Reliance Infrastructure over outstanding payments for a coal-fired power plant project. India’s Reliance Infrastructure has now applied to the Singapore International Commercial Court to set aside the SIAC award on the grounds of fraud and Shanghai Electric has again put their trust in Drew and turned to me and my team to defend the award before the Court. What guiding principles or strategies do you employ in the courtroom to effectively represent your clients and navigate the intricacies of the legal system? The first step is to understand one’s case fully. This includes both researching the law as well as establishing all the facts of the case. The latter involves digging deep into the documents and also have really examined all the facts and tested the evidence before commencing litigation. Thereafter, it is just a process of doing everything to get to the truth and display that for the Court to see. What have been some of the evolving trends and developments in the litigation space in your jurisdiction? How do you stay ahead and ensure success for your clients? More and more of the work before the Singapore Courts is international in nature. Commerce is never limited by geographical boundaries and so our clients’ problems come with a distinctly multijurisdictional facet. So one has to understand different cultures and different legal systems to be able to be put one’s arms around a corporate or commercial dispute. A deep knowledge of Private International law is critical, and more and more elements of public international law are also important in cases before the Singapore Courts. These are other aspects of modern litigation which lead to an increasing complexity that litigators have to master. The only way to stay ahead in the midst of this ever increasing complexity is to approach the job with a real desire to keep learning. This includes understanding new businesses (e.g. cryptocurrency exchanges), keeping abreast of changes in the law, and learning about new countries (I learned a lot about mining in Papua New Guinea this year!). Litigators can lead interesting lives if they welcome continuous learning. A conversation with Cavinder Bull, SC BROUGHT TO YOU BY DREW & NAPIER interrogating one’s client to get total clarity on what happened. The process I follow is not simply to take client’s instructions but to actually challenge and test the facts that I am presented with. Having rigorously established the facts, the next step is to advise the client. If they have a strong case, then we can press on to Court. If not, other options like mediation have to be seriously pursued. Should the client’s case be worth pursuing in Court, then we are by then usually in a very good position to litigate since we Cavinder Bull, SC Chief Executive Officer E: cavinder.bull@drewnapier.com Drew & Napier 10 Collyer Quay, 10th Floor Ocean Financial Centre, Singapore 049315 W: www.drewnapier.com
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