Our Firm helped develop the Venture Capital Investment Model Agreements (“VIMA”), a set of model documents for seed rounds and early stage investing in Singapore and South-east Asia. VIMA was launched on 23 October 2018 by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and the project was spearheaded by the Singapore Academy of Law (“SAL”) Promotion of Singapore Law Committee, the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (“SVCA”), Temasek, Allen & Gledhill and two other law firms.

We are proud to have actively supported the VIMA initiative since its inception. We were among three law firms which formed the core working group that drafted and worked on the VIMA documents. Our team of lawyers comprising Partners, Yeo Wico and Christian Chin, as well as Counsels, Julian Ho and Nicholas Soh, actively engaged with venture capitalists, Singapore agencies as well as domestic and international law firms via a consultative process to launch VIMA.

VIMA balances the interests of investors and investees and helps parties reach common ground more quickly by narrowing the scope of open issues subject to negotiation by the parties. Drafted in a simple and reader-friendly form, the model agreements include explanatory notes to help users decide the position they wish to take based on their relative bargaining positions. This reduces transactional costs and time taken in deal negotiation, especially for early stage financing.

Our commitment to VIMA has deepened since its launch. We have been busy working with various bodies such as the SAL, SVCA, academic institutions such as the Centre for Banking & Finance Law at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, as well as the start-up community, in providing knowledge-sharing seminars on VIMA and the venture capital space.