Mr Clayton Chong > WongPartnership LLP > Singapore, Singapore > Lawyer Profile

Mr Clayton Chong

+65 6416 2472 clayton.chong@wongpartnership.com View profile

Work Department

Special Situations Advisory; Restructuring & Insolvency

Position

Clayton Chong is a Partner in the Restructuring & Insolvency and Special Situations Advisory Practice.

Career

His main areas of practice include restructuring and insolvency with a focus on formal and out-of-court cross border restructurings. He has acted for debtors and key lenders in high-value restructuring transactions, and advised on insolvency aspects of complex financial arrangements.

Work Highlights

Matters of significance in which Clayton has been involved in include advising / acting for the following:

• The judicial managers of Xihe Holdings, an oil tanker conglomerate with estimated assets and liabilities over US$1 billion, in connection with the structured sale of Xihe Holdings’ tanker fleet.
• The Miclyn Express Offshore Group in its US$500 million restructuring of its debts and liabilities through a scheme of arrangement in Singapore.
• EMAS Chiyoda Subsea in its US$1.6 billion cross-border debt restructuring exercise, including successfully obtaining recognition of its US Chapter 11 reorganisation plan in Singapore.
• A syndicate of lenders in the S$2.1 billion refinancing of facilities granted to Senoko Energy Pte. Ltd., Singapore’s largest power generation company contributing about 20 per cent of the country’s electricity needs.
• The ad hoc committee of noteholders in the successful US$3.5 billion cross-border restructuring of SGX-listed Noble Group Limited in 2018.
• The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, Singapore Branch in relation to the proposed restructuring of the Design Studio Group through a scheme of arrangement in Singapore, and in successfully obtaining approval of a rescue financing arrangement involving a “roll-up” of pre-petition debts in the seminal decision Re Design Studio Group Ltd [2020] SGHC 148.

Publications & Legal Updates

• INSOL International, Singapore Chapter, “ESG in Restructuring” (2023)
• Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law, “Roll-up rescue financing in Singapore: giving old debt senior priority” (March 2021)
• International Insolvency & Restructuring Report 2020/21, “The emergence of debt restructuring regime for corporate groups in Singapore”
• International Insolvency & Restructuring Report 2021/22, “The restructuring of corporate bonds in Singapore”
• International Insolvency & Restructuring Report 2022/2023, “Singapore: The Singapore International Commercial Court and its role in establishing Singapore as a nodal jurisdiction”
• Singapore Academy of Law Practitioner’s Journal (Insolvency and Restructuring), “Section 440 of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018: Restrictions on Ipso Facto Clauses” (November 2019)

Memberships

Clayton is a member of the International Insolvency Institute’s NextGen Leadership Programme which recognises the most prominent young lawyers, insolvency professionals and academics in the world.

Education