Darius Tay

Practice Areas

• Corporate insolvency

• Corporate restructuring

• Corporate finance

• Corporate and commercial litigation

Career

One of the founders of BlackOak, Darius’ work focuses on special situations, including both contentious and non-contentious aspects of corporate restructuring and insolvency (“CRI”), banking and finance as well as mergers and acquisitions for special situations. A key component of Darius’ practice is advising various fund managers on both compliance and regulatory matters as well as issues arising from their investments and portfolio companies and working with various debtor companies.

As a separate component of Darius’ practice, he works closely with various start-ups, especially those in the logistics field, advising them with all aspects of their business including regulatory and business contracts as well as assisting them with corporate governance and fund raising.

Darius was appointed to the Singapore Supreme Court’s Young Amicus Curiae Scheme in 2014. He acted as amicus curiae in the only reported Singapore judgment on the issue of testamentary capacity regarding the disposal of one’s Central Provident Fund (Singapore’s national retirement savings plan) monies and was also part of the Insolvency Practitioners Association of Singapore’s working committee on their amicus brief in Kao Chai Chau Linda v Fong Wai Lyn Carolyn and Others [2016] 1 SLR 21, a landmark Singapore decision on insolvency practitioners’ remuneration.

Professional Memberships

- Member, Insolvency Practice Committee of the Law Society of Singapore

- Member, Singapore Academy of Law

- Supreme Court Insolvency and Restructuring Court Users’ Committee (IRCUC)

- Member, NextGen Committee, Turnaround Management Association (South East Asia)

- Member of the International Insolvency Institute (III) and the III’s NextGen Leadership Program

- Co-chairman in Organising Committee for the III’s 24th Annual Conference to be held in 2024 (Singapore)

- Member of the Insolvency Practitioner’s Association of Singapore (IPAS) and Founding Executive Committee -

- Member and the Chairperson of IPAS – Young Insolvency Practitioner Committee (YIPC), 2019 – 2023.

- Young Amicus Curiae, 2014-2015

Work Highlights

• Advising No Va Land, Vietnam’s leading mid-market residential real estate developer and investment corporation which has in excess of US 10 billion worth of debt, in the restructuring of in the convertible bonds in Singapore by way of a pre-packaged scheme of arrangement (the “Pre-pack Scheme”). My team successfully obtained an order from the Singapore International Commercial Court (the “SICC”) for the approval of the first Pre-pack Scheme in the SICC. The Pre-pack Scheme was proposed by NVL in relation to the restructuring of its SGX-listed US$300 million New York law governed convertible bonds, which received overwhelming support (in excess of 95% of all outstanding bonds) from creditors.

• Acting for Nam Cheong Limited (with liabilities amounting to over RM1.5 billion) in the successful restructuring of the Nam Cheong Group. BlackOak successfully obtained recognition from the Singapore High Court for the NCL Malaysia-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border insolvency as enacted under Singapore Law (the “SG Model Law”). Notably, there were no reported cases in Singapore on the recognition and enforcement of schemes of arrangement from other common law jurisdictions under the SG Model Law prior to this.

• Spearheading the restructuring of the Yang Kee Group, and collaborated and worked with the group’s international advisors, Hogan Lovells and Webb Henderson. Advising the Yang Kee Group on its investor search process to find potential investors in order to recapitalise its capital structure. Advising on various other matters including the restructuring of debts valued at approximately S$450 million, the sale of existing assets and taking on additional facilities, in order to facilitate the overall restructuring process.  

• Advising the Liquidators of ITNL Offshore Pte. Ltd. and ITNL International Pte. Ltd which are both Singapore subsidiaries of the India incorporated Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS) group which collapse involved claims of 1 Trillion INR.

• Advising Eqonex Limited, a company previously listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange with primary operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Vietnam, and its group of companies on the Singapore law aspects of the restructuring of the Eqonex Group, particularly on its interim judicial management, judicial management and voluntary liquidation processes under the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018, advising the company on the settlement of its debts of over USD 18 million with is key creditor and on devising structures to raise new monies to facilitate the rescue of the valuable business of the company and its group of companies. 

• Advising the liquidators of Eqonex Capital Pte. Ltd., the entity responsible for the OTC business operations of the Eqonex Group in Singapore which previously operated a digital assets trading platform, on the distribution of the company’s remaining digital assets in connection with its eventual dissolution.

• Advising the liquidators of Midas Holdings Limited, a leading manufacturer of aluminium alloy extruded products for the passenger rail transportation sector in China, on the liquidation of the Company and to assess the potential claims against the company’s auditors. BlackOak successfully obtained significant third-party funding for the liquidation of the company and represented the liquidator in the application for the disclosure of audit working papers, which involved a detailed analysis of (i) the extra-territorial effect of the now repealed section 285 of the Companies Act 1967, and (ii) Chinese State Secret laws and their interaction with any potential Court order by the Singapore Court.

• Advising Cube Highways Trust, an infrastructure investment trust (“InvIT”) in India which is said to hold the biggest portfolio of road assets to be put under the InvIT structure so far in India, with a diversified portfolio of 18 toll and annuity road assets with an aggregate length of 1,423.60 kilometres, on the Singapore law aspects and providing a Singapore law legal opinion, a condition precedent of the InvIT in India, on the capacity of the Singapore Cube Highways Entities to enter into certain transactions and the enforceability of such transactions relating to the InvIT in India.

Languages Spoken

English, Mandarin

Expert in these Jurisdictions

Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, HK, India

Education

Awards