Feature

In this article, we discuss that in relation to making sustainability disclosures, if companies are able to unpick and rationalise the alphabet soup of standards, requirements and frameworks, many will find a set that suits their particular business model or industry. However, as the number of different reporting frameworks increases this is fostering confusion, lack of comparability and reporting fatigue. Greater global convergence may help to alleviate these issues.

In this article Professor Suzanne Rab responds to the Financial Market Law Commission’s clarion call to consider key competition issues arising from a move to Risk Free Rates (RFR) or similar. She identifies challenges for the competition law regulation of banking benchmarking practices that need to be addressed.

Two recent circuit commercial court decisions have considered the scope of a Payment Service Provider’s duty of care to its customer when executing payment instructions (Quincecare duty) in the contexts of identity fraud: Hamblin v World First Limited [2020] EWHC 2383 (Comm) and authorised push payment fraud: Philipp v Barclays Bank UK Plc [2021] EWHC 10 (Comm). This article speculates in the light of these two decisions whether, where scheme funds lent under the Coronavirus Bounce Back Loan Scheme have been misapplied, the British Business Bank could escape liability under the Scheme guarantee on the grounds that the lender has breached its Quincecare duty.

In this article the authors consider a parent bank’s liability for the torts of its subsidiary in light of the Supreme Court decision in Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell [2021] UKSC 3.

In this article, the authors consider some of the key international developments in Q4 2020 relating to LIBOR transition. They conclude that parties should exercise significant caution before signing up to the ISDA 2020 IBOR Fallbacks Protocol.

This article summarises the post-Brexit position regarding inbound and outbound recognition of insolvency and restructuring proceedings between the UK and the EU.

In this article we consider what duties are owed by a lender in the period after default by the borrower, but before any appointment or other enforcement steps are taken. We do so in the context of the question of what duties are owed in relation to restructuring services or actions of the lender having regard, in particular to the recent decision and observations of the Court of Appeal in Morley Estates v Royal Bank of Scotland [2021] EWCA Civ 338. We start by considering the question of why there is a need for protection and then seek to identify the case in favour of lenders’ duties being owed in the context of the decision made in Morley Estates v RBS at first instance and in the Court of Appeal.

Holders of Islamic financial instruments (often creditors) carry well-justified expectations that offerors and issuers (often borrowers) will observe the highest levels of integrity, transparency and proper (non-prevaricatory) conduct. The discussion surrounding the legal ramifications and impact on the Islamic financial services industry of Dana Gas PJSC v Dana Gas Sukuk Ltd and others [2017] EWHC 2928 (Comm) (17 November 2017) (Dana Gas PJSC) is therefore still incomplete. The High Court’s decision to rule the Purchase Undertaking valid and enforceable, regardless of whether the Mudarabah Agreement governing the Sukuk had been Shariah complaint or not, barely scratched the surface. Indeed, if anything, what has come out of the High court in Dana Gas PJSC is that not much has been said in a manner which would have addressed fundamental questions pertaining to Sukuk in a norm-setting way.

In this article the authors consider the structure of loan buybacks with a consideration of the documentary changes made by the Loan Market Association (LMA) as well as some of the approaches that have evolved in the market to address buybacks.

There is often much angst about choosing the right method of calculating interest on an arbitral award and, indeed, which interest rate to use. There are no criteria that can be applied a priori to assist in the selection in a particular case. Rather, the key is to determine what monetary return the injured party might have earned had they had use of the arbitral award over the relevant period of time. This amount can then be readily translated into a method and interest rate to suit the arbitrator.