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Countering counter sanctions: treaty based remedies for investors in Russian assets?
In this Spotlight article the authors discuss examples of Russian counter-sanctions and when recourse by investors to protections conferred by investment treaties may be appropriate.
25 March 2024Are sanctions sustainable?
In this Spotlight article Thomas F Huertas considers the impact of sanctions on financial stability and their importance for national security. He posits that financial regulators need to consider how sanctions should be integrated into the financial system without inflicting collateral damage on it.
25 March 2024Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: unincorporated companies by another name?
This Spotlight article argues that a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) ought to be regarded as having a constitutive law; that the rule of private international law to ascertain the constitutive law should be that it is the law with which the DAO has the closest and most real connection, objectively determined at the time of its creation; and that if English law is the constitutive law, a DAO should be held to be an unincorporated company (ie a species of large partnership).
25 March 2024Re-imagining safe assets
In this Spotlight article, Avinash Persaud asks why, in response to the pandemic, the bulk of the fiscal and monetary stimulus was in countries that issue international safe assets. He suggests two approaches that would enable others to issue international safe assets and a new type of safe asset that could help mend our planet.
25 March 2024Geopolitical uncertainty: managing market shutdown risks
The renewed Russian invasion of the Ukraine is placing a stark emphasis on financial market participants and also on trading venues needing to have sufficient resilience to weather operational and digital risks – and also to ensure they have fallbacks in place if the power goes out. This is separate to consideration on sanctions and their impact on financial market participants.1 In this Spotlight article, Michael Huertas considers the steps financial market participants need to take in anticipation of a power supply failure, a cyber-attack and military conflict. He draws comparison with the position in France and Germany.
25 March 2024I would if I could, but I can’t: the impact of sanctions on finance party interactions in typical debt-financing transactions
Recent events have thrown the spotlight on sanctions. Sanctions provisions in facilities agreements are frequently keenly negotiated, and most lenders have minimum requirements. We typically see lenders focus more on the activities of the obligor group and its business than on the other lenders and finance parties to the transaction. Accordingly, we anticipate many of our clients revisiting their sanctions policies and giving greater weight to mitigating risks associated with any party to a transaction becoming the subject of sanctions, not just members of the obligor group.
20 March 2024Frozen Russian funds: can the courts let it go?
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, billions in assets frozen pursuant to sanctions represent a potentially available source of funds to satisfy the obligations of defaulting Russian debtors. In practice, however, unlocking sanctioned funds is not straightforward. In this Spotlight article, Richard Blakeley considers the extent to which EU member state and UK courts can permit the use of frozen funds to satisfy claims against defaulting Russian debtors following the judgment of the CJEU in Case C‑340/20 Bank Sepah v Overseas Financial Limited and Oaktree Finance Limited.
20 March 2024Sustainable finance: perspectives on some of the difficult questions
This article explores some of the current thinking behind “sustainable finance”. After briefly describing what is involved and offering up some perspectives, it raises questions and sets out modest proposals in reply. Several different questions are raised but the common theme explored is – whether or not sustainable finance as currently envisaged risks making the situation any worse than it already is.
19 March 2024Are leveraged LDI strategies lawful?
In this Spotlight article, Richard Salter KC discusses the legality of the use by defined benefit pension schemes of repos to achieve leverage as part of their liability driven investment (LDI) schemes.
19 March 2024The bubbling emerging market crisis and what the world should do about it
A silent wave of financial stress is running through world financial markets. The proximate cause of the crisis is the combination of COVID-debt and a jump in the US dollar. Fighting the dollar’s appreciation with higher interest rates on debt will push the world into crisis and recession. To forestall the worst, the IMF Board must immediately: – increase access to its unconditional rapid financing facilities; – increase access to its unconditional rapid financing facilities; – temporarily suspend interest rate surcharges; – fulfil their commitment to rechannel to developing countries at least $100bn of its recently issued special drawing rights (SDRs) that give holders automatic access to liquidity; and – agree to a new $650bn SDR allocation. Delay will spread social and economic collapse that will reverberate worldwide. Let us not be quick to save banks but slow to save countries.
19 March 2024
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