Home
ANNOUNCEMENT(S)
15 February 2024
Thank you June and Intellitrain, welcome CMA
Happy Lunar New Year to all of our fellows, members, colleagues and friends of the SIArb who celebrate.
May the Year of the Dragon bring you joy, success, good health and abundance!
The Lunar New Year is customarily a time for reunions with loved ones, to give thanks and to celebrate new beginnings. In this connection, this season marks a time of thanksgiving and transition for SIArb as we onboard a new secretariat team following the retirement of Intellitrain as SIArb's secretariat services provider.
As a volunteer led organisation with an extremely busy annual programme, SIArb has been fortunate to have had the support of June Tan and her fantastic team at Intellitrain over the past decade. Intellitrain has contributed as a true stakeholder of SIArb, seeing through milestone after milestone, including our 40th anniversary Gala Dinner in 2022, digitalising and taking our Fellowship and International Entry Courses to the next level during the unprecedented pandemic years, launching the Singapore Arbitration Journal and not least organising innumerable successful lectures, symposia, seminars and social events that our members and friends have enjoyed year after year. Despite a challenging handover years ago, Intellitrain leaves SIArb on strong foundations with three consecutive years of growth and a solid financial position.
In these respects, June and her team over the years (including Joy, Lynn, Cheryl, Linh, Daphne, Shandy, Keerthi, Gabriel and others who have worked behind the scenes) will always be fondly remembered as part of the SIArb family.
On behalf of SIArb, Council wishes to convey our utmost gratitude to June and her team (present and past) for their contributions to SIArb’s development and evolution. Many of our members will have interacted with June at some point and we will all miss her.
Sadly, the time has come to bid farewell to Intellitrain as secretariat, but we will continue to count them as friends and look forward to welcoming June and her team as special guests of SIArb on future occasions.
Effective 15 February 2024, directors Allison Law and Beatrice Goh and their team at CMA International Consultants will be taking over in providing secretariat services for SIArb. CMA was founded in 1995 and has over 25 years of experience in providing secretariat services to professionals-led associations as well as conference and event management. Their contact details will be published on SIArb's website and LinkedIn page. The new SIArb enquiries hotline will be +65 6336 4970.
2024 got off to a cracking start with two CPD events already, including the ever popular annual 'Developments in Singapore Arbitration' hybrid seminar by Professor Lawrence Boo and Delphine Ho, which again attracted over 100 registrations in Singapore and abroad.
Given the transition in the secretariat team, Council foresees that we are likely to have to moderate the number of events organised by SIArb in the initial few months. Thank you in advance for your understanding and patience as we welcome CMA to the SIArb family. Our priority is to ensure a smooth transition so that our governance and cornerstone activities, in particular our membership and fellowship courses, will not be impacted. We plan to pick up the pace of events again later in the year and will continue to hold our flagship events such as the SIArb Lecture, Annual Symposium and Annual Dinner.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me or any of the Council Members.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing everyone at our upcoming events.
Tay Yu-Jin
31 March 2017
In each issue of our newsletter, we interview an SIArb member to get their views on the alternative dispute resolution scene in Singapore, and to obtain some insight into what makes them tick.
In this issue, we interview PROF TAN CHENG HAN SC, former Dean of Law at the National University of Singapore.
How would you describe yourself in three words?
I can only think of one-boring
How did you first get involved in arbitration work?
When I was appointed to a panel in the early 2000s.
In the course of your work, do you notice a trend in clients preferring arbitration over litigation as a form of dispute resolution?
Absolutely, there is a discernible trend driven in no small part by the number of cross-border transactions and the confidentiality of proceedings.
What is the most memorable arbitration or arbitration-related matter that you were involved in, and why?
It was a joint venture that had gone sour, and it was memorable because the deal revealed the depth of corruption at that time in a country in Asia.
What advice do you have for a young fellow practitioner interested in arbitration work?
You have to put in the hours, there is no substitute. Reputation is everything.
What are the challenges you think arbitration practitioners will face in the upcoming years?
Although arbitration is doing well, it can be time consuming and expensive. Thus its value proposition will increasingly be questioned.
With the establishment of the Singapore International Mediation Centre and the introduction of the SIAC-SIMC Arb-Med-Arb Protocol, do you see mediation as now having a bigger role to play in assisting parties to resolve their disputes?
Yes, I do and this is a good thing.
Who is the person(s) who has had the greatest impact and/or influence on your career?
My father because he was a lawyer and that no doubt made me sensitive to a career in the law, and Dean (later Justice) Tan Lee Meng who asked me in my final year to consider academia, a prospect I had not previously entertained as I was an indifferent student in my school years.
If you weren’t in your current profession, what profession would you be in?
Perhaps a historian, or law enforcement/regulation.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Almost anything sweet.
What is one talent that not many people know you have?
I would like to know too! I do hold a Black Belt Third Dan in Tae Kwon-do but I suspect the examiners are very kind to mature practitioners.
Fill in the blank: “Arbitration is to dispute resolution as _______”
"water is to snow ”. Apologies, I had to endure unseasonably cold weather earlier this year in Europe and this is the only thing that comes to mind.
Latest News
- SIArb’s Annual Commercial Arbitration Symposium and Annual Dinner (29 November 2023)
- SIArb Annual Debate 2023 "This House Believes That AI Arbitrators Will Eliminate Cultural Biases In International Arbitrations" (7 December 2023)
- SIArb Young Practitioners Network Mentoring Programme (25 May -31 December 2023)
- SIArb YPN Networking & Drinks Event 2023: How To Get Your First Arbitrator Appointment (2 March 2023)
- WEBINAR: Developments in Singapore Arbitration (16 February 2023)
- SIArb "Beyond Arbitration: Global Perspectives" Lecture - Principle, Policy and Diplomacy in International Relations (6 September 2022)
- Webinar Series: Focus on Energy Disputes - Part 2: Renewables (28 July 2022)
- SIArb Focus on Energy Disputes- Gas (21 June 2022)
- SIArb Roundtable Discussion on: “How to Make a Career in Arbitration” (2 June 2022)
- WEBINAR: Conflict of Laws in International Arbitration (18 May 2022)
About SIArb
The Singapore Institute of Arbitrators is an independent professional body established in 1981. We are a truly neutral professional body with no link or affiliation to any particular industry but bonded together with a common interest in arbitration & other alternative dispute resolution procedures. Presently, we have almost 1000 members geographically represented throughout the world, many are practising professionals from a wide spectrum of diversified backgrounds who are also directly and indirectly involved in the dispute resolution procedures as Arbitrators, Mediators, Expert Witnesses and Consultants. Our main focus is in the aspect of professional training & development. Besides being a centre for promoting knowledge of arbitration & other ADRs, we also act as an appointing authority for the appointment of arbitrators upon requests. We work closely with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. READ MORE
Site designed and maintained by Intellitrain Pte Ltd. Copyright © Singapore Institute of Arbitrators. All rights reserved.