WongPartnership LLP

Special Situations Advisory; Restructuring & Insolvency

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

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)

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.

Singapore Management University (LL.B., Hons.)