Singapore’s Unrivalled, Leading Shipping Practice
With over 20 years of experience, our shipping practice provides a complete service to the global maritime community. Our unrivalled understanding of the shipping industry attracts clients from across the sector, including major shipowners, charterers, ship managers, P&I clubs, banks and investors with substantial shipping portfolios. We aim to build long-standing relationships and provide practical advice to all our clients.
Our team of shipping legal experts are consistently recognised by legal ranking agencies as elite practitioners in Singapore. Clients and international law firms often comment that we are one of the few law firms in Singapore who have the capability to manage complex high-value legal matters in Singapore and the region. The team has experience in handling highly contentious matters as well as complex transactional and advisory work.
What do we do?
Dry Shipping
The firm has one of the largest practices in this area and is considered a leader in the dry shipping sector. We offer an extensive breadth of expertise, know-how and experience across the full range of dry shipping work, including:
- Bills of lading
- Charterparties and contracts of affreightment
- Shipbuilding and construction contracts
- Ship sale and purchase contracts
The firm provides effective and commercial advice to enable transactions and trade to take place without issue and, when disputes do arise, to get the vessel and cargo moving as soon as possible.
The team is regularly instructed on shipping arbitrations in Singapore, London (particularly those under the LMAA Rules) and Hong Kong.
Admiralty and Crisis Management
The firm’s Emergency Response Team has extensive crisis management experience and have acted in shipping casualties in recent years. This includes work on collisions, salvage, wreck removal, total loss, piracy, oil pollution and other environmental damage. The team is familiar with all issues arising from casualties including salvage, insurance, tonnage limitation, statutory/criminal liability and environmental/ pollution issues.
Ship Arrests
The team is regularly instructed in arrests and maritime claims against vessels. Where vessels cannot be arrested in Singapore, the team works closely with foreign lawyers to effect arrests in the most advantageous jurisdictions.
The firm represents both local and international clients including international financial institutions, charterers, shipowners, bunker suppliers and P&I Clubs. Most notably, our team was involved in the arrest of numerous vessels for an international financial institution after the collapse of one of the world’s largest bunker suppliers.
Other notable cases the team has been involved in are The “IVANOVO” where our lawyers acted for the Ukrainian government in setting aside an arrest in Singapore and The “ASIAN ATLAS” where our lawyers arrested a vessel in Hong Kong on the basis of an indemnity claim for pure economic loss.
Marine Insurance
The team acts for major hull and cargo underwriters, some of whom instructed us exclusively on all their claims. In addition to advising on policy liability and handling recovery actions, the team also assists clients in drafting their standard terms of cover. We work very closely with clients on managing their claims in order to help them improve their loss ratios.
The team has previously advised marine insurers on issues arising out of the terrorist attack on the “LIMBURG” off the coast of Africa and coverage issues arising from acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
Shipbuilding, Repairs and Conversion
The team provides advice to owners, operators and shipyards on all aspects of shipbuilding, conversion and repair contracts. When disputes happen, they are frequently complex and usually costly for all parties. Our lawyers will work with you to try to resolve disputes whether through mediation, litigation or arbitration. Our team has dealt with the construction of vessels and rigs in yards in China, Korea, Japan, Singapore as well as Rotterdam and is frequently instructed to advise on defective design, defective construction, delays, negligent repair invoices and claims in tort.
Corporate Shipping & Ship Finance
We have acted in numerous vessel sale and purchase transactions and have also advised on flag registration. Our work in this area includes advisory work and drafting of charterparties, contracts of affreightment and crewing agreements.
We also have a leading ship finance practice, acting for ship finance banks, a wide range of owners, operators and other investors across all areas of the shipping and offshore sectors. Our work includes advising on all forms of finance including syndicated, club and bilateral debt financings as well as leasing, export credit financings, seller’s credits, derivatives and other credit enhancement products, bond issues and other forms of capital raising.
