Under the Singapore Companies Act, a complainant applying for leave to pursue a derivative action must give fourteen days’ notice to the company, but the judge hearing the leave application is by statute granted discretion to excuse non-compliance with the notice requirement. In Fong Wai Lyn Carolyn v Airtrust (Singapore) Pte Ltd, the Singapore High Court attempted to address for the first time the question of when the court would exercise its discretion to excuse. This article critically evaluates the decision on this issue in Airtrust, and offers guidelines synthesised from Commonwealth jurisprudence on how the Singapore courts could exercise their statutory discretion to excuse notice in the future.