Justice Kannan Ramesh

Biography

Justice Kannan Ramesh was appointed Judge of the Appellate Division on 1 November 2022. He was appointed Judicial Commissioner in May 2015, and Judge of the High Court in April 2017. He was also appointed as a Judicial Commissioner of the Supreme Court of Brunei Darussalam SCBD on a part-time basis from 2019 to 2023 where he heard both commercial and civil cases.

He received his Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the National University of Singapore in 1990. He was then admitted as an Advocate and Solicitor in Singapore in 1991, and appointed Senior Counsel in 2012.

Before his appointment as a Judicial Commissioner, Justice Ramesh was Managing Partner of Messrs Tan Kok Quan Partnership from 2008, where he specialised in dispute resolution, insolvency and restructuring, and international arbitration.

He was also appointed as Board Member of Singapore Aerospace Manufacturing Pte Ltd and M1 Limited. In the former, he had an added role as Executive Committee Member, while in the latter, he was Chairman of M1’s Risk Committee, as well as Member of their Nominating and Audit Committees.

He is a member of the Singapore Academy of Law’s Law Reform Committee, and President of New York’s International Insolvency Institute and part of its Arbitration and Conciliation working group. He was instrumental in establishing the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN) which issued in October 2016, guidelines for court-to-court communications and cooperation in cross-border insolvencies.

In June 2022, he was appointed by the Chief Justice as the co-chair of the Commercial Practice Panel of the Supreme Court, to develop best practices for the management of commercial cases. On 24 June 2023, he was formally inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy (ACB) in Washington, D.C., the first Singaporean Judge recognised as an International Fellow of the ACB.

Justice Ramesh authored Getting the Deal Through – Restructuring and Insolvency in 51 Jurisdictions Worldwide in 2010. He also authored the Singapore Chapter in Doing Business – Closing a Business Survey, a World Bank publication, published in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Speeches by Justice Kannan Ramesh

• Speech to the Brunei Judiciary on insolvency and restructuring
• Speech delivered at Conversations with the Community on 27 March 2024
• Keynote address delivered at the APIEx Symposium 2023
• Keynote Address at the Asia Pacific Institute of Experts Symposium 2023
• 2^nd International Research Conference on Insolvency and Bankruptcy 2023
• Emerging Commercial and Litigation Trends in Data Sovereignty and Digital Assets Seminar 2023
• Insolvency Training Programme for Brunei 2022
• United Kingdom Singapore Law Students’ Society’s Singapore Legal Forum 2019
• 2^nd Annual GRR Live New York 2018
• Singapore Insolvency Conference 2018
• International Association of Insolvency Regulators 2016