Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM

Partner

Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM, is a corporate lawyer, and is Co-Head of the Firm’s Corporate & Commercial Department.

A pioneering regional competition law and foreign investments specialist, he is concurrently Regional Co-Head of the Firm’s Competition & Foreign Investment Review Practice. His practice covers the entire remit of competition law including antitrust litigation, international cartels, monopolies and dominance, foreign investment screening, and global merger control.

Ranked as Global Elite Thought Leader for the Asia-Pacific region by Lexology Index: Competition, Chambers Asia-Pacific names Daren as “Singapore’s top competition lawyer”. Daren is also the first and only Singapore competition lawyer to be ranked by Chambers Asia-Pacific as Eminent Practitioner.

Daren’s market-leading expertise dates back to antitrust origins in the region, when he had been cited as “the most highly nominated practitioner”, and “a real expert according to rivals”, in the inaugural Competition chapter of Lexology Index: Singapore. For his unparalleled antitrust experience, Daren is currently recognised in the tier of the Most Highly Regarded in Lexology Index: Southeast Asia, in which he is referred to as the “number one name in Singapore” due to his “stellar reputation”. Lexology Index: Competition names Daren as “senior statesman” of the Singapore competition bar.

Before he turned 40 in 2012, Daren was named by Global Competition Review as one of the world’s most talented competition lawyers, in its quadrennial 40 Under 40 Forty survey, and is the only South-east Asian lawyer in the history of the list. More than a decade later, Lexology Index: Competition updates that “Daren Shiau cuts a distinguished figure in the Singaporean market”.

On the related emergent field of foreign investment control laws, Daren is also the only Singapore lawyer named Global Elite Thought Leader by Lexology Index: Foreign Investment Control. When omnibus FDI laws were introduced in Singapore in 2024, Daren the publication by recognised him as “a clear leader in FDI reviews” whose “deep understanding of concepts of foreign ownership, control and influence in the region are unsurpassed”.

His “superstar” deal book of ground-breaking competition transactions, which has been described by Chambers Global as “market-leading”, covers general antitrust, as well as sectoral regimes such as banking and insurance, media and telecommunications, electricity and gas, and airports.

Daren is Singapore’s first-ever appointed non-governmental advisor to the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) at the International Competition Network (ICN). Peers recognise that his collective antitrust “achievements are well-deserved”.

A commissioned trainer of the high-level ASEAN Experts Group on Competition (AEGC), Daren is also Principal Examiner on competition law for both the Singapore Institute of Legal Education’s Foreign Practitioners Examinations, as well as its gateway Singapore Bar Examinations. He has also worked in Magic Circle London and Brussels competition practices on European Commission and Office of Fair Trading matters, and is a non-practising solicitor of England and Wales.

Daren graduated on the Dean’s List of the National University of Singapore in 1996, and was awarded the Malayan Law Journal Book Prize. He is currently District Councillor of the Central Singapore District, and has served on governmental agencies and committees throughout his career. His current directorships include also the Board of Directors of MSI Global (formerly MRTC Singapore International), the commercial subsidiary of the Land Transport Authority. For his contributions to the nation, Daren was conferred the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat) in 2016, and the Public Service Star (Bintang Bakti Masyarakat) in 2022.

Work Highlights

• Lead advisor in a predominant majority of Singapore’s merger control cases, and the majority of all complex Phase 2 Reviews, including Grab/Uber, Siemens/Alstom and Alstom/Bombardier, Thomson/Reuters, Holcim/Lafarge, Johnson & Johnston/Synthes, Volkswagen/MAN, Western Digital/SanDisk, GlobalWafers/Siltronic, Analog Devices/Maxim, SK Hynix/Intel, AMD/Xilinx, Thermo Fisher/PPD, iNova/Mundipharma, Glencore/Chemoil, Nippon Steel/Sumitomo Metal, Hyundai Heavy/Daewoo Shipbuilding, Sembcorp Marine/Keppel Offshore, Times Publishing/Penguin Random House, Omnicom/IPG, Fujifilm/Entegris, and SIA/Airbus.
• Successfully represented appellants in a watershed Competition Appeal Board matter where the CCCS was adjudged to have failed to establish liability in an issued Infringement Decision.
• Successfully defended parties in 100 per cent. of Singapore’s international cartel decisions to-date, including acting for the successful amnesty applicant of Singapore’s first global cartel decision (freight forwarding), and the successful leniency applicants to its second (ball bearings) and third (aluminium electrolytic capacitors) ones.
• Successfully represented parties in numerous landmark abuse of dominance and unilateral effects cases to-date. Daren acted for the complainant in the investigation against the world’s largest soft drinks maker (which received the GCR Behavioural Matter of the Year for Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa), and the first dominance appeal to the Competition Appeal Board (ticketing). Founding member of the International Bar Association Antitrust Committee’s inaugural Unilateral Conduct Working Group.