England: decline in UK commercial litigants at High Court as financial list drawn up

The news comes as the High Court prepares to create a new list of financial lawsuits worth over £50 million the Financial Times reports.

Complex disputes over derivatives, equity or commodities will be processed faster as they will be overseen by a single, nominated judge who will deal with the entire case rather than a number of judges pre-trial.

The financial list will be released from October and comes as new figures from Portland Legal Disputes indicates that foreign nationals made up 63 per cent of 562 litigants in the year ending March. The firm looked at 1,020 rulings in the period March 2008 to March 2015.

But the number of UK litigants has also gone up with about 207 using the commercial court in that period and accounting for 36 per cent of the total – 88 litigants more than in the preceding 12-month period.

Cases included one brought by Vincent Tchenguiz, a property entrepreneur, which related to a mismanaged criminal investigation by the UK fraud office.

In addition, the numbers show that in the 12-month period, 71 countries were represented in the commercial court.

Of these, 20 litigants were from Kazakhstan and 23 from Russia. One case saw Sergei Pugachev, who was known as the Kremlin’s banker, lose a challenge to overturn a UK court order for the freezing of assets worth up to $2 billion.

Lawyers have welcomed the announcement of the financial list.

Ian McDonald, head of the commercial dispute resolution at Mayer Brown, said: “It will mean a judge will be put in charge of the case from start to finish and the test case pilot will mean that a number of issues that potentially have wider ramifications will be able to get quick decisions.”

Courts in the UK attract foreign litigants as they are regarded as neutral and safe with an independent judiciary.

Additionally, various financial transactions are also regulated by English contract law which gives litigants strong powers such as search orders and freezing injunctions.