By way of an update to the series of recent Court of First Instance decisions on whether a winding up petition ought to be stayed where the underlying dispute is governed by an arbitration clause, Harris J has very recently granted the Petitioner in Re Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings Ltd [2023] HKCFI 2731 leave to … Read more

Where a winding up petition is based on a debt arising from a contract with a non-Hong Kong exclusive jurisdiction clause, the court will tend to dismiss or stay the winding up petition in favour of the parties’ agreed forum unless there are strong countervailing factors. The Court of Final Appeal confirmed this approach in … Read more

In the current economic climate, more and more companies are getting into financial difficulties, informal workouts by debtor companies, with support from certain creditors, seem to be increasingly common. The latest English High Court decision of Henderson & Jones Ltd v Ross & Ors [2023] EWHC 1276 (Ch) highlights a possible litigation risk for the … Read more

In R. (on the Application of PACCAR Inc) v Competition Appeal Tribunal [2023] UKSC 28 (judgment handed down on 26 July 2023), the UK Supreme Court held that litigation funding agreements with third parties who play no part in the conduct of litigation, but who are to be paid a share of any damages recovered by … Read more

When a company is in the so-called “twilight zone” approaching insolvency, it is well-established that the directors’ fiduciary duties require them to take into account interest of creditors (the so-called “creditor duty”). In the recent decision of Stephen John Hunt v Jagtar Singh [2023] EWHC 1784 (Ch), the English High Court examined whether it is necessary … Read more

Following the Court of Final Appeal’s landmark decision in Guy Lam, Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance (the “Court”) considers that winding-up petitions can be stayed by reason of ongoing cross-claims that are the subject of an arbitration clause Recently, the Court of Final Appeal confirmed that a Hong Kong bankruptcy petition should generally be … Read more

In two remarkably similar cases, Re Peking University Founder Group Company Limited [2023] HKCFI 1350 (the “Peking University Case”) and Re Tsinghua Unigroup Co., Ltd [2023] HKCFI 1572 (the “Tsinghua Case”), the Hong Kong Court affirmed the enforceability of keepwell deeds entered into by PRC companies as credit enhancement for bonds issued by their respective offshore subsidiaries. The … Read more

In June 2022, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) proposed a number of sweeping enforcement-related reforms which would have, among others, significantly enhanced the SFC’s ability to obtain investor compensation orders against regulated persons who had committed wrongdoing if enacted (please refer to our June 2022 briefing). Read more