Allen & Gledhill LLP has won the first Singapore Deal of the Year in the Islamic Finance news (IFN) Deals of the Year 2009 Awards for the Monetary Authority of Singapore Sukuk Ijarah Program. This is the first time that an award has been given by IFN for a Singapore deal. Winning the award serves as an acknowledgement of the strides that the Firm has achieved as the leading Islamic Finance firm in Singapore. The same deal also received honourable mention in the Asian-Counsel Deals of the Year 2009.

The IFN Deals of the Year was established in 2006 and recognises those who participated in the industry’s most groundbreaking transactions each year. Financial institutions, intermediaries and service providers are invited to submit their chosen transactions from the previous 12 months, which fall under one of the carefully selected sectors. A panel of experts from non-competing organisations then sieve through all submissions during the elimination process until just one transaction in each category remains and is thus awarded the winner of that category.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has been named South East Asia Legal Advisor of the Year 2009 in the Financial Times and Mergermarket Asia Pacific M&A Awards. This is the second consecutive year the Firm has won this award since its inception in 2008. The M&A Awards recognise mergers and acquisitions expertise excellence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The winners were chosen based on M&A transaction data from mergermarket.com and independent expert opinion from a panel of leading Asian M&A practitioners.

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We are pleased to announce that our Head of Intellectual Property & Technology, Dr Stanley Lai, has been appointed as Senior Counsel on 9 January 2010 at the opening of the legal year. The appointment of Senior Counsel is given to those with outstanding ability as advocates, extensive knowledge of law and high professional standing.

Stanley is a specialist in all forms of Intellectual Property litigation and enforcement. He also maintains a commercial litigation practice, and regularly advises and represents clients on information technology disputes. Stanley advises a large number of local and foreign clients on branding strategy, and general IP portfolio management and domain name protection. Stanley’s practice has also extended to advising bio-medical and pharmaceutical companies on issues of regulatory/ethical compliance, clinical trials, product recall and product liability. Stanley graduated from the University of Leicester with an LLB (Hons) degree in 1992. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1993. He obtained an LLM from the University of Cambridge in 1994 and was called to the Singapore Bar in 1995. Stanley then commenced his Ph.D research at the University of Cambridge in the field of technology law and computer software copyright and completed his doctorate within three years. He is the first Singapore-born lawyer to have been conferred a Ph.D in Law from the University of Cambridge.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has been named as a leading M&A Firm in Singapore by Asian Legal Business in their Asia’s Leading M&A Firms report. This award has been given to local leaders in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan for being the best local counsel on mega-M&A. Our success has been due in no small measure to both the trust and unstinting support given to us by our clients.

Managing Partner Lucien Wong has also been named as one of Asia’s top 25 M&A lawyers. He is the only lawyer in Singapore to be listed.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has been awarded Singapore Firm of the Year 2009 for five out of 17 practice areas by Asian-Counsel in its third annual ‘Representing Corporate Asia’ survey, being named top in the most number of practice areas in Singapore.

The Firm was named Asian-Counsel Singapore Firm of the Year 2009 for the following five practice areas:

The selection of Asian-Counsel’s Firms of the Year 2009 was based on votes and testimonials by hundreds of senior in-house counsel across Asia and the United Arab Emirates. Participants were asked which law firms were their preferred external partners for each area of practice in the various jurisdictions.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has been named Singapore Law Firm of the Year 2009 by Who’s Who Legal. This is the fourth consecutive year that the Firm has won this award. The awards are based on a number of factors, including the feedback received in the ongoing research process, past performance in the research and the overall aggregate number of weighted votes cast in the Firm’s favour.

Editor-in-chief of Who’s Who Legal, Callum Campbell, said: “In a highly competitive field, receiving the Who’s Who Legal Law Firm of the Year Award for Singapore for a fourth time is an outstanding achievement. Allen & Gledhill LLP has won the award every year since its inception, and is among a select band of firms to achieve such a feat. The consistently positive feedback we received recognises its continuing and exceptional individual and collective talent in this jurisdiction, and we have no hesitation in once again declaring Allen & Gledhill LLP the leading firm in the country.”

Partners from Allen & Gledhill also received sufficient nominations from their clients and peers to be listed 20 times across 12 practice areas in The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers 2009, a compendium edition of all the individual Who’s Who Legal publications. The Firm had more practitioners included than any other firm in Singapore.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP won five awards out of 34 categories, giving it first place ranking among Singapore law firms, at the Asian Legal Business (ALB) SE Asia Law Awards 2009, which were organised to recognise the largest, most innovative and complex legal work done in 2008.

The Firm was named Singapore Deal Firm of the Year and Tax and Trusts Law Firm of the Year, and was also awarded for:

The ALB SE Asia Law Awards recognise the excellence of Southeast Asia's leading law firms as well as the top deals and dealmakers of 2008. The Firm has won the Singapore Deal Firm of the Year award for four consecutive years since 2006 and also won the Singapore Firm of the Year in 2005.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has won the Best Law Firm (Transactions) in Asia Award in the highly regarded Private Equity International (PEI) Awards 2008. The Firm is the first Singapore law firm to have won this award, beating other international law firms in this category. Click here to view the press release.

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We are pleased to announce that our Litigation & Dispute Resolution Partner, Ang Cheng Hock, has been appointed as Senior Counsel on 3 January 2009 at the opening of the legal year. The appointment of Senior Counsel is given to those with outstanding ability as advocates, extensive knowledge of law and high professional standing. Cheng Hock’s areas of practice include corporate litigation, such as shareholders' disputes and breaches of directors’ duties, securities-related litigation and banking litigation. He also advises on claims in defamation and professional negligence. Cheng Hock graduated with a First Class Honours from the National University of Singapore and has a Masters in Law from Yale Law School. He has been recommended in various international legal publications for his expertise in commercial litigation and dispute resolution.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP has been named Singapore Tax Controversy Firm of the Year by International Tax Review at the Asia Tax Awards ceremony held on 26 November 2008 at the Fullerton Hotel, Singapore. Sunit Chhabra, Partner of the Firm’s Tax Practice Group, was present at the ceremony to receive the award. The Firm has won this award for three consecutive years since the inception of the Asia Tax Awards. The awards represent the opinions of tax executives’ on the leading tax advisers in Asia based on their work between September 2007 and September 2008.

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Allen & Gledhill LLP is pleased to announce the appointment of Tang Siau Yan as Partner of the Firm’s Tax Practice Group with effect from 1 September 2008. Siau Yan specialises in tax dispute resolution and cross-border tax issues. His expertise includes advising foreign and multinational clients on Singapore taxation and tax-efficient corporate structures for regional investments, tax compliance and regulatory matters. He has also assisted clients in negotiating and resolving tax disputes with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. Siau Yan graduated from The London School of Economics and Political Science with an LLB (Hons) degree (First Class) in 1999 and obtained an LLM from Cambridge University in 2000. After graduation, he joined the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and was the Deputy Director of the Legislation branch when he left in 2007. He is also a non-practising member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore.

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We are pleased to announce that K Shanmugam SC, a senior partner and the Head of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice at Allen & Gledhill LLP (“Allen & Gledhill”), will be appointed to the posts of Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs in the Singapore Cabinet on 1 May 2008. We warmly congratulate Shanmugam on his ministerial appointments.

Shanmugam has been a partner of Allen & Gledhill since April 1991 and is recognised as one of Singapore’s top litigators. Shanmugam has built up a core team of experienced and highly competent litigators under his leadership of Allen & Gledhill’s Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice. For his outstanding contributions to Allen & Gledhill, we take this opportunity to extend our sincere thanks to Shanmugam and wish him all the best in his ministerial roles.

We would like to announce that Andrew Yeo will be the newly appointed Head of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice at Allen & Gledhill. Andrew Yeo has been a partner of Allen & Gledhill since 1998 and Deputy Head of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice since 2004. He has acted in several high-profile matters: more recently for the Land Transport Authority in the Nicoll Highway tunnel collapse and the BGC/Tullett Prebon litigation involving the alleged “poaching” of several teams of derivatives brokers. Andrew has been heavily involved in the area of international arbitrations, acting in several large scale commercial arbitrations. He has been recommended for this area of international arbitration in the latest edition of The Asia Pacific Legal 500 (2007/2008). His other areas of specialisation include insolvency and transport/infrastructure disputes.