📰 Weekly Roundup (26 May-1 June 2026): Singapore Radar #1 | Sritex Anatomy | India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Turns 10
Weekly newsletter
Dear Valued Contacts,
Based on feedback from friends in the market, I developed the Radar to address four common pain points:
Investors, lenders and restructuring practitioners need an early warning system so they can prepare in advance. As a financial advisor put it, by the time the news hits the headlines it’s already too late to act.
Most readers are busy professionals who don’t have time to go through a thousand-word essay. They want a concise overview of what’s going on before they meet clients or discuss potential deals with their teams – and then they can go deeper selectively.
Real-life situations are not siloed into purely financial, legal or political domains, while capital doesn’t just flow into a single asset class.
In emerging markets, relationships are as important as – or even more crucial than – numbers. When constructing scenarios or positioning themselves, readers need to know who the players in the game are.
Acrostics Asia Radars:
Connect the dots and help readers to anticipate what lies ahead.
Compress information into a one-page brief that can save time for readers.
Map the ecosystem by combining the companies and people to watch.
🛜 Singapore Radar #1 (26 May 2026)
Whether or not business is good in Singapore really depends on which sector you’re in. If you’re in private banking, family offices or wealth management, there’s no better place to be than in the city-state, as a lawyer put it.
In the restructuring and insolvency space, there are a couple of interesting cases, such as the restructuring of a Singapore-incorporated alcohol distributor and the application to wind up a fintech company.
Some liquidations are ongoing, but they tend to be smaller tickets in the F&B sector that are nowhere near the scale of Singapore oil trader Hin Leong’s collapse six years ago.
Companies to Watch
Keppel’s subsidiary launched arbitration proceedings at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre against its joint venture partners in Vietnam.
Singapore car portal UCars was reportedly wound up more than a year after it was revealed to be SGD 4 million (USD 3.1 million) in debt. The appointed liquidator is Seah Chee Wei of Rock Stevenson.
People to Watch
Quantuma’s Asia Office Buyout
Jacqueline Chan Named R&I Lawyer of the Year at Legal 500 Southeast Asia Awards
📚 Acrostics Anatomy: Kebangkrutan Sritex (29 May 2026)
One of my mentors who’s a veteran Indonesian banker advised me to translate my articles into Bahasa as they should be useful for the local audience. I’m selectively translating Acrostics Asia’s coverage, starting with the bankruptcy of Indonesian textile giant Sri Rejeki Isman (Sritex).
This Anatomy brings together the financial, legal and political insights that can help readers to understand the final chapter of Sritex’s 59-year journey. It also extracts concise lessons for investors, banks and borrowers, drawing from conversations with people who are familiar with Sritex’s restructuring.
IBC@10: Discipline of Letting Go by M.S. Sahoo and Raghav Pandey (28 May 2026)
M.S. Sahoo, Former Chairperson of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, shared his article on India’s 2016 Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) that was jointly authored with Raghav Pandey.
“The real test of an insolvency regime is not how many firms it saves, but how quickly and accurately it determines when a rescue is viable and when an exit is better,” Sahoo and Pandey wrote in a piece that was published on Mint.
“The Code contains that logic. What remains elusive is an institutional willingness to let go: of claims, control, rights, expectations and, when necessary, the firm itself, when doing so is the only way to preserve value.”
Acrostics Asia is an independent credit intelligence provider that connects the dots across Asian sovereigns, private credit and restructurings.