SIAC Symposium 2026 Part 1: Rule of Law, Resilience, and the New Playbook for a Fractured World

The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) held the fifth edition of its Symposium on 24 August 2026, coinciding with Singapore Convention Week. The event fell in a landmark year for both host and institution: 2026 marks the 200th anniversary of Singapore's 1826 Second Charter of Justice, which laid the foundations of the country's modern legal system, and SIAC's own 35th anniversary since its founding in 1991. Judges, government officials and users of arbitration from over 40 jurisdictions gathered for a full-day programme that ranged from institutional stock-taking to a wide-ranging discussion of how businesses and their legal advisers are adapting to a more volatile world. This is the first of a two-part series on the symposium, covering its morning sessions.

Opening Remarks and Welcome Address

In their opening remarks, Ms Gloria Lim (Chief Executive Officer, SIAC) and Mr Davinder Singh SC (Chairman, SIAC Board of Directors; Executive Chairman, Davinder Singh Chambers LLC) welcomed delegates. Ms Lim highlighted a year of expansion for the institution. SIAC opened a Beijing representative office in May 2026, and a Delhi liaison office in July 2026, bringing its network to seven overseas offices across China, India, the United States and South Korea, having served parties from over 100 jurisdictions. On rules and case management, it was reported that adoption of the SIAC Rules 2025 is progressing well, with multi-language translations of the rules under way. The Compendium of SIAC Challenge Decisions was published in March 2026 (and discussed in this post), and a series of Guidance Notes were issued in July 2026 on page and word limits, management of document production requests, and the issuance of awards in summary form under the Streamlined Procedure and Expedited Procedure. An updated Practice Note on cases administered by SIAC under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules was also issued. In collaboration with the SIAC Academy, the SIAC Institute of Ethics in International Arbitration will launch a new six-part “Ethics in Action” series in October 2026. SIAC has also conducted conferences, seminars, training sessions, and outreach initiatives across 22 jurisdictions since the start of the year.

Rule of Law and Business Confidence

The morning's opening panel brought together Mr Edwin Tong SC (Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs, Singapore), Ms Peta Latimer (President, Mercer Asia), and Mr Anand Stanley (President, Airbus Asia-Pacific), for a lively discussion moderated by Ms Lucy Reed (President, SIAC Court of Arbitration; Member, SIAC Board of Directors; Independent Arbitrator). Framing the rule of law as a practical necessity for cross-border commerce rather than an abstract ideal, Ms Reed quoted Lord Bingham’s principle that laws must be publicly made, predictable, and fairly administered by independent tribunals, alongside Thomas Paine’s maxim in Common Sense that "the law is king". Grounded in these ideas, the panel's shared theme was that predictability, while necessary, is not sufficient: fairness in how laws are made and enforced, and trust in the institutions that apply them, underpin investor and business confidence as much as the rules themselves.

The business leaders on the panel identified geopolitical unpredictability as the foremost operational concern. Ms Latimer noted that this uncertainty now touches day-to-day operations across sectors, while Mr Stanley observed that supply chain resilience remains a priority. Mr Tong characterised trust as an essential currency for Singapore, including trust that party autonomy will be respected and that disputes will be resolved within a fair and understood framework. On dispute resolution, Mr Tong highlighted the role of mediation (alongside arbitration and litigation), where preserving a valuable long-term commercial relationship matters. The panel also anticipated that new categories of disputes arising from digital assets, intangible property and artificial intelligence (“AI”) are likely to grow in importance. Compliance with economic sanctions was cited as a further, and increasingly complex, feature of cross-border business, given the divergence of sanctions regimes across jurisdictions.

The discussion also turned to Singapore's own positioning. Panellists pointed to the country's institutional stability, skilled workforce and long-standing investment in infrastructure as competitive advantages in an uncertain environment. Mr Tong cited Changi Airport as a case in point: the government's support for the aviation sector through job support schemes and an early push on vaccination to reopen borders during the COVID-19 pandemic helped the airport to retain its hub status. The panel framed regional competition as non-zero-sum, with Singapore positioned as one of several hubs serving a fast-growing Asian market. On AI, Mr Tong compared its potential impact to that of electricity, and observed that legal training and practice will need to adapt accordingly. The broader discussion presented AI as both disruptive and potentially transformative, with its value depending on how it is harnessed.

The New Playbook: Navigating Risk, Strategy and Global Change

The first plenary, moderated by Mr Cavinder Bull SC (Vice-President, SIAC Court of Arbitration; Chief Executive Officer, Drew & Napier LLC), brought together Justice Andre Maniam (Judge, High Court of Singapore, Supreme Court of Singapore), Mr Wade Coriell (Member, SIAC Court of Arbitration; Partner, International Disputes, King & Spalding), Ms Goh Swee Chen (Chairman, Nanyang Technological University and National Arts Council), Mr Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara, (Chief Executive Officer, Temasek Holdings), and Professor Tan Cheng Han SC (Senior Consultant, WongPartnership LLP). One of the panellists described the current environment as a polycrisis, similar to that of the 1970s, marked by the end of the post-1990 era of US-led unipolar globalisation and its replacement by a more contested, coalition-based order. Concurrent conflicts, energy shocks, the unprecedented pace of AI-driven change and inflation were cited as compounding sources of crises.

A central theme was the shift in corporate strategy from optimising for efficiency to optimising for resilience. As one formulation put it, efficiency determines where a business can go, while resilience determines where it can stay. Panellists described boards moving from annual or semi-annual risk reviews to quarterly cycles, elevating the risk committee to the board's most significant committee, and relying increasingly on external and specialist advisers on cyber, AI and climate-related questions. The panel noted that sovereign risk can no longer be mapped neatly onto a developed-versus-emerging-market divide: governments in developed economies are now also using tariffs, sanctions, export controls and foreign investment screening as tools of strategic policy, meaning the same rigorous risk assessment is warranted across all markets.

On dispute trends, the panel pointed to a marked rise in cross-border claims, driven by successive shocks from pandemic-era supply disruption through to sanctions-driven contract terminations. The panel also discussed the growing overlap between commercial disputes and questions of public policy and sanctions, and the resulting rise in parallel proceedings and applications for anti-suit relief across jurisdictions. It observed the Singapore courts' response as a shift from prescriptive procedural rules toward higher-level guiding principles, supported by a “futures thinking group” that tracks developments in AI, cryptocurrency and intellectual property, so that the courts are well prepared before disputes involving these technologies arise.

The panel further discussed how these pressures are reshaping the role of the lawyer — in-house and external alike — from a late-stage, transaction-closing function toward an earlier and more strategic function, engaged from the inception of a transaction rather than at the point of dispute. Well-drafted dispute resolution clauses, naming a neutral seat and avoiding overlapping grants of jurisdiction, were described as a business's first line of defence against adverse governmental action, alongside layered protections such as investment guarantees and political risk insurance for higher-risk markets.

On the use of AI in litigation and dispute resolution, the panel welcomed its potential to deliver significant efficiency gains, for example, distilling voluminous case materials into concise summaries. At the same time, panellists flagged a recent instance in which fictitious legal authorities generated by AI had been cited in court submissions without being identified as such, prompting courts to issue new practice directions to guard against this risk and preserve the integrity of the dispute resolution process.

Looking Ahead

Taken together, the morning sessions offered a picture of an arbitration community adapting institutionally, commercially and procedurally to a more contested and technologically disrupted world, with Singapore positioning itself as a stable and predictable venue within that landscape. The second part of this series will cover the SIAC Symposium 2026's afternoon sessions.