An article in Global Restructuring Review on the Thai court’s approval of Thai Airways’ business rehabilitation plan features insights from John Frangos, partner and deputy director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution department. The article reports that the airline’s rehabilitation plan has received court approval, over objections from two of the creditors. This step will now allow the airline—which has received over 13,000 debt repayment claims—to implement plan under the control of five administrators. John, who co-leads the firm’s regional aviation practice, explained a number of issues to the article’s author, including the Thai government’s unwillingness to bail out the financially troubled company, the challenges facing Thai Airways (and the Thai aviation industry as a whole) during the pandemic, and the historic nature of this bankruptcy case. John is representing many creditors of Thai Airways, and he shared their general reaction to the rehabilitation plan, noting that most were not necessary happy with it but did not object because they figured it was “the best deal they are going to get.” The full article is available on the Global Restructuring Review website.

On July 1, Jay Cohen, partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ Cambodia practice, shared insights into Cambodia’s increasingly active solar energy market in a webinar organized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Jay’s presentation was titled “Solar Industry in Cambodia: Overview of Key Issues” and was featured as part of this larger webinar on solar parks and energy storage in the country. The presentation covered a wide range of topics, including the role of the state in Cambodia’s energy sector, the regulatory framework for the solar industry, licensing rules and concerns, resilient business models for solar energy enterprises, and investment incentives for solar energy entrepreneurs in Cambodia. Jay also identified the key government agencies that solar energy businesses need to deal with, discussed the intricacies of electricity tariffs, explained regulations for different types of energy consumers, and offered guidance on how the solar energy industry may develop in Cambodia in the coming years.

On June 24, Athistha (Nop) Chitranukroh, partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ corporate and commercial group and head of the firm’s data privacy and cybersecurity team, joined and facilitated an online session entitled “Preparing and Implementing PDPA compliance policies in Thai companies.” Hosted in collaboration with True Digital Group and True Digital Park, subsidiaries of leading communication conglomerate True Corporation, the session provided insight on PDPA preparation and implementation from both legal and practical perspectives. Athistha led the discussion from the legal advisory side, including updates on the government’s decision to further postpone enforcement of the law, while Manita Kansap, a data privacy specialist from True Digital Group, provided insight from the perspective of an in-house implementer. A recording of the webinar, which was presented in Thai, is available on Tilleke & Gibbins’ YouTube channel.

A June 14, 2021, article discussing Cambodia’s future as an oil producer features insights from Jay Cohen, partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins in Cambodia and the country head of Tilleke & Gibbins’ regional energy practice. The article, which was published by Nikkei Asia, considers possible routes forward for exploitation of the country’s oil and gas reserves in light of the recent insolvency of KrisEnergy, which had just begun producing oil from an offshore Cambodian concession. The article explains that KrisEnergy, a Singapore-based company, was forced to declare bankruptcy shortly after they began operating their share of a Cambodian concession they purchased several years ago from Chevron. They found that the concession contained a lower volume of accessible oil than expected, and the revenue would not be enough to cover their mounting debts. Nevertheless, just days later Cambodia went ahead with a ceremony to mark the country’s first drops of oil—produced by the concession to KrisEnergy. The ceremony demonstrates the high hopes that Cambodia has placed on the potential of its oil resources to bring economic transformation, but also highlights the uncertainty facing these plans now that the country is left without an operator to extract the oil. In the article, several experts in the Cambodian energy market discussed the developments and shared their thoughts on where the country’s oil ambitions might go from here. Jay commented specifically on KrisEnergy’s discovery that the concession contained a smaller amount of recoverable oil than originally assumed. He emphasized that the commercial viability of the concession will have to be reassessed to determine whether reviving production with a different operator is a practical possibility. The full article is available on the Nikkei Asia website.