A Detailed Comparison of Third-Party Funding Regulations in Hong Kong and Singapore

This article was first published in the Asia Pacific Law Review, here.

ABSTRACT

Third-party funding (TPF) has played a major role in international arbitration over the last decade. Despite uncertainties and continuing discussions on whether TPF should be regulated, Singapore and Hong Kong successively passed laws to legalize and regulate TPF, and both jurisdictions have become leading pioneers globally. This can be largely attributed to their competition with each other to be Asia’s leading arbitration centre, and by regulating the use of TPF, they have moved closer to this goal. However, even though both wish to ensure the legality of TPF in international arbitration, their laws and the consequences of non-compliance differ dramatically in each jurisdiction. Moreover, although these two jurisdictions are leading arbitration centres, their laws on TPF have not yet been analysed thoroughly in the existing scholarship. This article aims to fill the gap, following the comparative law methodology and analysing the rules on TPF in Hong Kong and Singapore. It also aims to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of the laws adopted differently by the two jurisdictions and answer two important questions: (i) What laws could create better conditions for funders? and (ii) What can be done to improve those conditions?

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Professor Julien Chaisse, Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review, as well as Dr Orkun Akseli, Carrie Shu Shang, Professor Deborah Hensler, and Jamie O’Connell for comments on an earlier draft of this article. The author also wishes to thank the Journal’s anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful comments, as well as the Managing Editor of APLR, Madeleine Fitzpatrick, for editorial support leading up to the article’s publication.

This article was first published in the Asia Pacific Law Review, here.

author

Can Eken

Mr Can Eken is an award-winning lawyer. He is writing his doctorate thesis at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. As a dual-qualified attorney admitted to practise law in California and Turkey, he specialises in international arbitration and has proven experience in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. He…

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