Singapore is seeking to enhance its position as a center for debt restructuring by giving its insolvency law some of the powers of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s Chapter 11, just as companies worldwide default on bonds at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The government has “broadly accepted” 17 recommendations submitted by a committee after a yearlong review, the Ministry of Law said in a statement. Those include offering automatic stay of legal and enforcement actions for debtors, creating a bench of specialist judges for its bankruptcy court and increasing rescue-financing capital by enticing distressed-debt funds and private equity firms to set up shop in the city-state. “We have all the basic building blocks for dealing with restructuring and we see that Singapore will be able to fill this space,” Indranee Rajah, senior minister of state for law, told reporters on Wednesday. “Singapore should not just be a debt restructuring place for Singapore companies and businesses but a global debt restructuring center much in the way as New York and London. We should be playing that role to the region and beyond.”
