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Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our Head of Business Development for Asia Pacific, Katie-Beth Jones, and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our practice management team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

Contact

Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our Head of Business Development for Asia Pacific, Katie-Beth Jones, and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our practice management team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

09/01/2024

Deploying anti-suit and anti-anti-suit injunctions to protect a London-seated arbitration agreement

Paul Lowenstein KC, Andrew Dinsmore and Alexandros Demetriades appeared for the claimant applicant in Renaissance Securities v Chlodwig Enterprises Limited and ors [2023] EWHC 2816 (Comm), where the Commercial Court granted an ex parte anti-suit injunction (ASI) and an anti-anti-suit injunction (AASI) to protect a London-seated arbitration agreement and to restrain the respondents from continuing proceedings which they had started against the applicant in Russia, in breach of the arbitration agreement and in purported reliance on new Russian procedural provisions brought in to assist Russian litigants to circumvent international sanctions.

This case will be of interest to commercial litigators in that it clarifies (at least at the ex parte stage) the circumstances in which the English court will grant anti-suit relief where foreign law – in this case, article 248 of the Commercial Procedural Code of the Russian Federation (art 248) – provides for the exclusive jurisdiction of its own courts, contrary to the arbitration clause, and where such foreign proceedings may allow a party to circumvent an applicable sanctions regime.

At the without-notice hearing, Mrs Justice Dias granted the applications for, amongst other things: (1) an ASI (at paragraphs 34–50), (2) an AASI (51–54), (3) a non-disclosure order until all the defendants were served (55–57), and (4) service by alternative methods (58–65).

Mrs Justice Dias held that:

  • Where an arbitration agreement is contained in a contract governed by English law and an application is brought before the English court, it is for the English court as a matter of private international law to determine its own jurisdiction.
  • To allow the respondents to continue to pursue the foreign proceedings would enable them (1) to litigate in a forum other than that which had been contractually chosen and where sanctions were unlikely to be considered; and (2) potentially to bypass international sanctions by the enforcement of any judgment obtained in the foreign court against the applicant’s assets within that jurisdiction. These considerations made the grant of an ASI just and convenient (41–43).
  • An AASI would also be ordered to prevent the respondents from obtaining their own anti-suit relief from the foreign court, the risk being that such anti-suit relief is expressly provided for in art 248. An application by the respondents for anti-suit relief from the foreign court would itself be a breach of the English court’s exclusive supervisory jurisdiction over the contractually contemplated arbitrations (51–54).

The return date is listed for February 2024.

More: Andrew Dinsmore and Alexandros Demetriades appeared in a related proceeding, reported as Renaissance Securities v Chlodwig Enterprises Limited [2023] EWHC 3160 (Comm). See www.twentyessex.com/penal-notices-and-the-babanaft-proviso-in-anti-suit-injunctions/