Description

The talk will:

1. briefly summarise the main characteristics and principles regarding letters of credit and demand guarantees;
2. consider how courts have dealt with enforcement of letters of credit and demand guarantees in England and Singapore;
3. discuss the decision of the UK Supreme Court in Taurus Petroleum Limited v State Oil Marketing Company of the Ministry of Oil, Republic of Iraq [2017] UKSC 64, which addressed important questions regarding when a debt will be owed to a beneficiary under a letter of credit, and the lex situs of the debt; and
4. aim to give practical guidance on how successfully to enforce, or seek to resist, payment.

About The Speaker

Dr Deborah Horowitzis a barrister practising at Fountain Court Chambers in London. She completed LLB (Hons) and BA (Hons) degrees at the University of Melbourne, trained as a solicitor in Melbourne, and then came to Oxford where she undertook BCL (Dist), MPhil (Dist) and DPhil degrees. She worked as a banking litigation solicitor at Freshfields in London, and then she transferred to the Bar in London, where she specialises in banking, commercial, construction, aviation and financial regulatory cases; she has 15 years’ experience as a litigator. Her doctorate, which addressed defences to payment under letters of credit and demand guarantees, was published by OUP as a book, and she frequently deals with disputes in that area. She was also instructed in one of The Lawyer’s “Top 10 Cases of 2017”, acting for RBS in the widely-publicised RBS Rights Issue Litigation, which involved group litigation claims by shareholders against RBS and some of its directors in relation to the prospectus issued in conjunction with RBS’s £12bn 2008 Rights Issue.

Who Should Attend

Banking lawyers, in-house bank counsel, policymakers