NEO 

Swee Suan, Dora

Dora Neo is the founding Director of the Faculty’s Centre for Banking & Finance Law (CBFL) and led the centre from 2013 to 2023. She is also Director of the Faculty’s LLM (Corporate and Financial Services Law) and Graduate Certificate in Corporate & Financial Services Law programmes. She was previously Vice-Dean (Research & Graduate Studies) and Director of the Faculty’s Continuing Legal Education Programme. She teaches contract law and credit & security law. Her current research focuses on modernisation of trade finance, global developments in secured transactions law, consumer protection in the financial industry, and selected issues in contract law. Her research interests also include the liberalisation of trade in services under GATS and free trade agreements, particularly in the ASEAN region, and banking law and commercial law generally.

Her recent publications include Gullifer & Neo (eds) Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (Hart Publishing, 2021); Hare & Neo (eds), Trade Finance: Technology, Innovation and Documentary Credits (Oxford University Press, 2021); Neo, Sauve & Streho, Services Trade in ASEAN (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Neo, Tjio & Lan (eds), Financial Services Law & Regulation (Academy Publishing, 2019) and Booysen & Neo (eds), Can Banks Still Keep a Secret? Bank Secrecy in Financial Centres Around the World (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

She has researched at institutions such as the United Nations Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in Vienna, Austria, and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany, and has taught and presented papers in the UK, USA, Europe and Asia. Her past appointments include being Visiting Professor at the University of Aix-Marseille III, France; Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University; and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and at Georgetown University Law Centre, Washington, DC. She taught regularly at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, and was a member of the international academic faculty at the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

She was a Senate member of the Singapore Academy of Law for several terms, and also served on its various committees, including the Legal Education and Studies Committee, the Publication Committee and the Law Reform Committee, as well as a financial collateral sub-committee of the Law Reform Committee. She authored the banking law chapter of the Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review of Singapore cases from 2014 to 2023. She serves on the Accreditation Committee of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education (SILE) and has contributed to policy making relating to the mandatory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Scheme since its introduction in 2012. She has also contributed more generally to government policy in Singapore as a member of the Injunctions Review Panel under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act, as well as at the Ministry of Law on secondment, and on national committees in areas including media policy and retail industry standards.

She was appointed by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) as a Correspondent for Singapore from 2022 to 2025. In 2021-2023, she was a appointed a member of the UNIDROIT Working Group on a Model Law on Warehouse Receipts (“MLWR”), and in 2023, continued as a member of the Working Group to draft the Guide to Enactment for the MLWR. She was invited by the Attorney-General’s Chambers of Singapore to attend the 40^th and 41^st Sessions of UNICTRAL Working Group 1 (Warehouse Receipts) as a member of the Singapore delegation in Vienna (September 2023) and New York City (February 2024).

She has conducted training for professionals and government officials in the areas of contract law, banking law and world trade law. From 2007 to 2010, she was an instructor for the World Trade Organisation’s Regional Trade Policy Course for the Asia-Pacific. In 2022 and 2023, in addition to participating in many events organised by CBFL at NUS Law, she spoke at conferences and seminars overseas: in Tokyo at the invitation of APEC and the US State Department, in India (virtual presentation) at the invitation of UNIDROIT, in Singapore and Seoul at the invitation of the Korean Ministry of Justice, and at Cambridge University.

She is a first-class honours graduate from Oxford University, and holds an LLM from Harvard Law School. She has a Certificate in Private Banking from the Wealth Management Institute in Singapore, and a Certificate in Real Estate Finance from the Department of Real Estate, NUS. She was called to the English Bar at Gray’s Inn in London, as well as the Singapore Bar, and practised law in Singapore before joining NUS.

• Banking and finance law
• Contract law
• Commercial law
• Secured transactions
• Payments
• Trade financing
• Trade in services