Philippines (asialaw)

Work highlights

Representing Petron Corporation, the largest company in the Philippines by revenue and operator of the country's only oil refinery, in successfully recovering ownership of 347 hectares of land on which its refinery, bulk plant, and service stations are located. The firm secured a favourable Summary Judgment against the Philippine National Oil Company in 2019, directing reconveyance of the land to Petron in exchange for a payment of PHP 143 million — against the government's own valuation of the land at over PHP 100 billion. The outcome is of critical national significance, definitively resolving the ownership of the land underpinning the Philippines' sole oil refinery and providing the company with the legal certainty it needs to continue operations that are central to the country's energy security.

Work highlights

Representing SPX Philippines (SP Express), the logistics arm of Shopee and the largest e-commerce platform in the Philippines, in over 50 labour complaints filed by employee-drivers of its third-party service providers seeking recognition as regular employees of SPX and claiming illegal dismissal and related monetary claims. The matters span multiple levels of the Philippine labour dispute resolution system, and over the past twelve months the firm has secured more than twenty favourable decisions across those forums, with rulings consistently holding that SPX is not the employer of the complainants and that its arrangements with manpower service providers constitute legitimate labour contracting. The cases sit at the heart of a pressing and unresolved labour question in the Philippines the employment status of delivery riders and drivers working within e-commerce ecosystems — and the firm's consistent track record of favourable outcomes has been instrumental in protecting SPX from significant and wide-ranging liability as the issue continues to evolve.