Conflict of laws—Jurisdiction—Challenge to jurisdiction

Court of Appeal, Civil Division, Mummery, Thomas and Pitchford LJJ, 20 August 2010

It is clear that in construing a jurisdiction clause, a broad and purposive construction has to be followed. When looking at a complex series of agreements, it is necessary to construe an agreement which is part of a series of agreements by taking into account the overall scheme of the agreements and reading sentences and phrases in the context of that overall scheme.

David Foxton QC and Sonia Tolaney (instructed by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer) for the bank. Tim Lord QC and Jasbir Dhillon (instructed by Travers Smith LLP) for the defendant.

The claimant was a global bank (the bank) incorporated in Germany and with offices worldwide. The defendant was a company incorporated in the Turks and Caicos Islands. In 2004, the defendant became a customer of the bank. In 2006 and 2008, it entered into a series of agreements with the bank for