The SICC, Mediation and the Singapore Convention
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A financial centre needs more than banks, funds and family offices. It needs a place where the disputes that its transactions generate can be decided fairly, quickly and in a form that the losing party’s assets will respect. The previous chapter examined the arbitration side of this infrastructure, which has made Singapore one of the leading seats in the world. This chapter turns to the two other pillars that Singapore built in the decade after 2013: an international commercial court staffed partly by foreign judges and a mediation framework that carries the city’s name into international treaty law. It then asks how judgments obtained in Singapore can be enforced where the assets actually are.
The three subjects belong together. The Singapore International Commercial Court, the Singapore International Mediation Centre and the Singapore Convention on Mediation were conceived within a few years of one another, by the same small group of judges, officials and practitioners. Each answers a different weakness of arbitration: its lack of appeal, its cost, its confidentiality and its difficulty with third parties. Together with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, they allow a party to choose the form of dispute resolution that suits the transaction, while staying within one legal system, one city and one language.
The Geneva volume describes a city whose reputation as a place of law rests on the Alabama arbitration of 1872, on the international organisations and on a modern arbitration statute. Geneva has no international commercial court of its own and was still debating one in 2026. Singapore went the other way. It decided early that a financial centre with ambitions in Asia needed a court designed for foreign parties. The city was also to become the reference point for international mediation. The comparison at the end of this chapter shows what each approach offers to clients who hold assets in both places.
Essentials
The Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) was launched on 5 January 2015 as a division of the High Court. It hears international commercial disputes that the parties submit to it in writing, cases transferred from the General Division, arbitration-related applications and cross-border insolvency matters. Its bench combines Singapore judges with 26 International Judges from common law and civil law jurisdictions. Registered foreign lawyers may appear in offshore cases and on questions of foreign law. The Singapore International Mediation Centre, founded in November 2014, offers mediation linked to arbitration (Arb-Med-Arb) and to SICC litigation (Lit-Med-Lit). The Singapore Convention on Mediation, opened for signature in Singapore on 7 August 2019, makes international mediated settlements directly enforceable in its 25 parties. SICC judgments travel through the Hague Choice of Court Convention, the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act and a network of memoranda of guidance with foreign courts.
For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.