The Overlooked Advisor – A Look Into Fee Applications

The focus in any restructuring and liquidation is value maximising for creditors and stakeholders. In this exercise of saving a business or realising value, insolvency practitioners may overlook their own interest by leaving the issue of fees undiscussed or left to an application that happens at the tail end of a long restructuring or liquidation. Join us for a discussion on recent tools deployed in restructurings and insolvencies to avoid fee shock, improve transparency on fees, and reduce out of pocket costs for restructuring and insolvency professionals. We will discuss, cost schedules, bills of cost and fee applications.

The learning objectives:

• To be familiar with the principles used by courts in evaluating cost schedules in judicial management and liquidation.
• To have an understanding of the issues that fee applications are aimed at addressing.
• A practical understanding of how fee applications are done and evaluated in view of recent developments in the cost scheduling, liquidation bill of costs and independent assessor models.
• Awareness of the latest mediation tools available for insolvency and restructuring practitioners to consider using for fee related issues.

Date & Time

10 December 2025 | Wednesday | 2:00pm – 4:30pm

Course Fees

• Member: S$250.00
• Non-Member: S$300.00

Please register and complete payment by 8 December 2025.

A Zoom registration link will be provided closer to the webinar date. Registering is required to obtain your unique webinar access link and for Singapore Institute of Legal Education (SILE) attendance verification. Handouts (if any) will be emailed to participants on the day of the webinar.

SILE Accredited CPD Activity

• Public CPD Points: 2.5 (inclusive of 1 Public MEC Point)
• Practice Area: Corporate / Commercial
• Training Level: Intermediate

Accountants will be issued with a Certificate of Attendance (Category 4).

Speakers

Ismail Noordin, Partner at WongPartnership LLP

Ismail’s main areas of practice are restructuring and insolvency, and special situation financings with a focus on formal and out-of-court restructurings and special situations.

Ismail has been involved in multiple special situation transactions and restructuring matters, including advising debtors, investors and creditors on restructurings and related transactions where debt and transaction values approach or were in the billions of dollars. This includes advising on restructuring and insolvency aspects of complex and/or cross-border transactions.

Some examples of restructuring and insolvency matters Ismail has advised on are: Three Arrows Capital Limited, the US$10bn cryptocurrency hedge fund that went bankrupt, as counsel to the liquidators; Noble Group, as counsel to the lead bondholder group in its US$3.5bn restructuring; Sandvine group, as counsel to company in its comprehensive restructuring to realign its business and operations; Miclyn Express Offshore, as counsel to the debtors in a scheme of arrangement for US$500m of its debt; Emas Chiyoda Subsea, as counsel to the debtors in a Chapter 11 plan for its US$1.6bn restructuring that was given effect in Singapore pre-Model Law; Xihe Holdings, as counsel to the judicial managers who oversaw a vessel sale programme and attempted restructuring with about US$1bn of debt.

Ismail is recognised as Highly Regarded by IFLR1000 – The Guide to the World's Leading Financial Law Firms.

Rajan Natarajan, Senior Director at Alvarez & Marsal (SE Asia)

Rajan has over fifteen years of experience in restructuring and insolvency. His work covers formal appointments as well as investigations, asset recovery and restructurings.

Some of his more notable engagements include identifying and prosecuting directors of a Singapore incorporated entity for breaches of their duties, resulting in their bankruptcy, administering and implementing schemes involving complex debt structures and managing cross-border insolvencies of companies with complex assets and group structures.

In the past five years, Rajan has also led multiple ‘independent assessor’ engagements where he has reviewed and evaluated other professionals’ fees and costs. Through these assignments and in addressing stakeholder concerns on professional fees and costs, he has developed a clear understanding of what constitutes ‘reasonableness’ and also, practical measures professionals can adopt when presenting their fees and costs.

SILE Attendance Policy

Participants who wish to obtain CPD Points are reminded that they must comply strictly with the Attendance Policy set out in the CPD Guidelines. For this activity, this includes logging in at the start of the webinar and logging out at the conclusion of the webinar in the manner required by the organiser, and not being away from the entire activity for more than 15 minutes. Participants who do not comply with the Attendance Policy will not be able to obtain CPD Points for attending the activity. Please refer to http://www.sileCPDcentre.sg for more information.