“January 2016 saw the launch of the Asian Business Law Institute (“ABLI”) in Singapore at an extremely successful conference with a stellar cast of speakers. The title of that conference was “Doing Business Across Asia – Legal Convergence in an Asian Century”. The ABLI is a transnational institute, and not a Singapore institute. Eminent members of the judiciary, academia and legal industry hailing from Australia, China, India and Singapore comprise its Board of Governors. The raison d’être of the ABLI is to promote convergence of business laws in Asia. The ABLI initiates, conducts and facilitates research with a view to producing authoritative texts that will serve to provide practical guidance in the field of Asian legal development. As a transnational institute, the ABLI is ideally placed and well-suited to embark on the task of formulating common principles that can serve as a reference tool for domestic cross-border legislation, especially in the Asia-Pacific context. This can be undertaken in synergistic collaboration with suitable partners. Indeed, I am able to say with enthusiasm that the process has already started within the ABLI. It is hoped that this could lay the platform for substantive convergence in Asian insolvency laws, or even an Asian lex mercatoria for insolvency.”
The above paragraph was from the speech delivered by Justice Kannan Ramesh of the Supreme Court of Singapore at the International Association of Insolvency Regulators’ 2016 Annual Conference and General Meeting. Click here for the full transcript.
