06/08/2024

Arbitration and anti-suit injunctions: lessons from the Deutsche Bank and Unicredit cases

A party to an arbitration agreement providing for arbitration seated in France brings a claim in the courts of another country, in breach of the arbitration agreement. The arbitration agreement is governed by English law. Should an English court grant an anti-suit injunction to restrain that breach, bearing in mind that the French courts cannot grant anti-suit injunctions?

The Court of Appeal’s decisions in Deutsche Bank AG v RusChemAlliance LLC [2023] EWCA Civ 1144; [2023] Bus. L.R. 1660 and Unicredit Bank GmbH v RusChemAlliance LLC [2024] EWCA Civ 64 (upheld by the Supreme Court on 23 April 2024; judgment currently pending) suggest that the answer is likely to be affirmative in most situations.

In a recent publication, Matthew Chan and Myron Phua (St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford) discuss the reasoning in Deutsche Bank AG v RusChemAlliance LLC and its significance when viewed alongside the Court of Appeal’s decision in Unicredit Bank GmbH v RusChemAlliance LLC.

The article titled ‘The enforcement of foreign arbitration agreements by anti-suit injunction” (submitted prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Unicredit) was first published in the July edition of the Law Quarterly Review (2024) 140 LQR 349 and is available on Westlaw.

Read the full article.