Most Singapore directors assume that if they cannot attend a board meeting, the meeting simply goes on without them. But the Companies Act 1967 allows for a different solution: the alternate director. Properly used, an alternate director lets a busy or travelling director keep a voice (and a vote) in the boardroom. Used carelessly, it [...]
Most Singapore business owners first hear about trusts in the context of ultra-high-net-worth family offices, Private Trust Companies, and eight-figure asset pools. That framing puts off a much larger group of directors and shareholders, often running a single successful Singapore company with a family home, some investment property, and a handful of listed shares, who [...]
Group structures are common among Singapore SMEs, whether it is a holding company sitting above two or three operating subsidiaries, or a family business that has grown into a small web of related entities. When one entity in the group needs financing, a bank will almost always ask for a guarantee from the other companies [...]
Since 2014 the common seal is optional for Singapore companies. Learn how Section 41B and 41C of the Companies Act 1967 let directors execute deeds and documents by signature alone.
Founders and their advisers occasionally come across the term "deferred shares" while structuring a company's share capital, usually while comparing notes with an ordinary and preference share class already on the table. It is a class most Singapore-incorporated companies will never issue, yet understanding what a deferred share actually is, and why it has fallen [...]
Redeemable preference shares are one of the more versatile tools available to Singapore private companies, yet they remain widely misunderstood outside professional circles. Unlike ordinary shares, which a company can only buy back subject to strict share buy-back rules, redeemable preference shares are designed from the outset to be bought back on terms the company [...]
EGM mechanics: resolutions, quorum and minutes, frequently asked questions. For directors and company secretaries managing ACRA compliance. Practical 2026 guide.
Drag-along, tag-along and shareholder agreements: Frequently asked questions. For directors and company secretaries managing ACRA compliance. Practical 2026 guide.
A creditor who discovers that a debtor company has quietly filed to strike itself off the register faces a genuine fork in the road. One path is to object to the striking off under section 344C of the Companies Act 1967, using the narrow window ACRA gives before the company disappears. The other is to [...]
Singapore families setting up a private trust company (PTC) usually reach the same conclusion within their first planning meeting: someone still has to hold the shares of the PTC itself, and whoever that is should not, in the ordinary sense, "own" it. This is the essence of the orphan structure, and Singapore practitioners now have [...]