The Avoidance of Unregistered Charge and Extension of Time to Register

Abstract

This paper argues that the decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal in Media Development Authority of Singapore v. Sculptor Finance (MD) Ireland Ltd [2014] 1 SLR 733 in effectively overruling Ng Wei Teck Michael v. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd [1998] 1 SLR(R) 778 has provided much needed clarification on the concept of commencement of winding up. But the concept of the statutory trust over the assets of a company in liquidation that the latter espoused has some merit in providing the proprietary basis for the avoidance of an unregistered charge against a chargor in liquidation. It also argues that the English practice on the registration of charges out of time where the chargor’s insolvent liquidation is likely has failed to give sufficient weight to the avoidance policy underlying registrable but unregistered charges.

Keywords: Commencement of winding up; Registration of charges; Out of time registration; Avoidance law

JEL Classification: K22