Nine Yards Chambers is a specialist firm with a sharp focus on complex civil and commercial disputes, often involving governance, shareholder rights, and urgent relief. The boutique was founded in 2020 by Nichol Yeo, a sought-after litigator and trial advocate, and has since grown to four directors: Managing director Yeo, Clement Tan, Qua Bi Qi, and Allan Tan, each a recognized name in their fields. The firm’s litigators regularly handle high-stakes cases requiring crisis management, urgent injunctions, freezing orders, and asset preservation, and they are known for acting with precision and speed to protect client interests.
Yeo leads Nine Yards’ dispute practice and is frequently engaged in critical matters for listed companies, multinational investors, directors, and high-net-worth individuals. His practice centres on shareholder disputes, urgent injunctive relief, boardroom and corporate governance battles, and trust litigation, often in situations where swift legal action can be decisive. Supporting him are seasoned litigator Tan, who brings the depth of perspective of a former District Judge to complex commercial cases, and Qua Bi Qi, a director highly regarded for her steady advocacy in trials across the Supreme Court and State Courts. Together, the team offers specialist expertise across a range of contentious arenas, from company and shareholder conflicts, to financial fraud and white-collar defense, to family trust and estate disputes.
In the past year, the firm has been at the forefront of several novel and high-profile cases. A recent highlight was when the firm successfully invoked the privilege against self-incrimination to resist a pre-action discovery application in a high-profile cryptocurrency dispute. By asserting their client’s right not to produce potentially incriminating information, Nine Yards set an important precedent on the limits of pre-action disclosure in civil suits that intersect with criminal allegations. The court’s decision in this matter, which attracted significant industry attention, confirmed that a person facing possible criminal liability may, in certain circumstances, lawfully decline to hand over documents even before a lawsuit is filed.
The team has also distinguished itself in company law and corporate governance disputes, frequently involving shareholder showdowns and board control. For instance last year, the firm obtained an urgent injunction within 24 hours to halt a contentious extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of a small and medium-sized enterprise, thereby maintaining the existing board’s control. The speed and efficiency with which the firm acted, securing an injunction on exceptionally short notice, protected the client’s management from a potentially hostile take-over attempt by a rival faction. In a related vein, the firm scored a victory late last year when it defeated an attempt to strike out a client company’s court action to invalidate an EGM notice, both at first instance and on appeal. This paved the way for the Nine Yards team to ultimately secure a favourable judgment declaring the disputed EGM notice void, thereby averting an illegitimate change of control in the company.
The firm’s disputes practice also extends into private wealth and property litigation, often involving complex trust and statutory issues. In a highlight case, the firm’s lawyers successfully struck out a suit by multiple claimants who claimed a share of a Singapore private residential property. The team, representing the property owner’s estate, marshaled intricate arguments under the Residential Property Act and invoked procedural trusts law to show the claim had no legal basis. The court agreed and dismissed the claim entirely, preventing an unwarranted dilution of the estate’s interests. In another matter last year, the firm defended an estate executrix sued personally for an account of rental income from a coffee shop, successfully arguing that neither a resulting trust nor a common intention constructive trust arose in favor of the plaintiffs. By demonstrating the absence of any trust over the rental proceeds, the firm protected the executrix from personal liability and preserved the estate’s assets.
