Re Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA, Re; Bank of Credit and Commerce International (Overseas) Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 30 July 1993 |
| Date | 30 July 1993 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Chancery Division
Before Mr Justice Rattee
Insolvency - foreign company - application of English law
The High Court had jurisdiction and a discretion to apply the English law of insolvency to matters relating to a company which was not registered in England.
Mr Justice Rattee, sitting in the Chancery Division, so held on a request from the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands, when interpreting the terms of section 426 of the Insolvency Act 1986.
Mr Michael Crystal, QC, Mr Richard M Sheldon and Miss Susan Prevezer, for the liquidators; Mr William Blackburne, QC, Mr Matthew Collings and Mr Richard Morgan for Sheik Khalid Salem bin Mahfouz; Mr Philip Heslop, QC, Mr A G Bompas and Mr Robert Miles for the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia; Mr William Stubbs, QC, Mr J Stephen Smith and Mr Ian Peacock for Haroon Rashid Kahlon.
MR JUSTICE RATTEE said that on December 7, 1992 on an ex parte application by the liquidators of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (Overseas) Ltd, a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands which had never been registered in this country, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands ordered a letter of request to be addressed to the High Court of Justice in England asking the court to exercise its jurisdiction under section 426 of the Insolvency Act 1986 so as to assist by making declarations under sections 212, 213, 214 and 238 of the Insolvency Act 1986, relating to alleged participation by the respondents in certain allegedly wrongful activities of the senior management of the BCCI group.
The issues to be decided were whether the court had jurisdiction to entertain those claims by the liquidators, and, if it did, whether it had a discretion how that jurisdiction should be exercised. Should the Mareva injunctions which had been granted be continued until the hearing of the originating application?
Having set out the provisions of the various sections and a passage from the judgment of Mr Justice Chadwick in In re Dallhold Estates (UK) LtdUNK((1992) BCC 394), his Lordship said that, giving the words of section 426 their ordinary meaning, he could see no justification for restricting their effect to the provisions of English Law which could be described as procedural as opposed to substantive.
The effect of that section was to give the court discretion as...
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