Stay of judicial proceedings: winding up

Where A and B have agreed to submit a dispute to arbitration, and B claims that A owes a debt and applies for a winding up order against A, the court must decide whether the arbitration clause or the winding-up order is to have primacy. It is apparent that the winding-up procedure, if allowed to prevail, could be a simple device to undermine the arbitration clause.

For that reason the English courts have held that as long as there is prima facie evidence that the debt is disputed, the matter must go to arbitration. The Singapore High Court in BWF v BWG [2019] SGHC 81 has taken the same view.