Class actions in Israel – a cautionary tale for international corporations

Class actions are a widely-used litigation practice in Israel and have been so for years. Illustratively, in each of the last three years, over 1,200 new motions to certify class actions were filed. Many of these claims were filed against multinational and foreign corporations concerning their operations in Israel. In fact, one might struggle to …

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Major changes to Taiwan financial services – sandbox experiments, token offerings and internet banks

The Taiwan government has been actively promoting fintech development and there have been several major developments recently. The primary regulator of the financial services industry, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), introduced the ‘regulatory sandbox’ in 2018 and several fintech experiments have been launched since. In June 2019, the FSC announced that it will regulate security …

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Cyprus and international commercial arbitration – an overview

Cypriot domestic arbitration proceedings are regulated by Arbitration Law, Cap 4, whereas international commercial arbitration is governed by International Commercial Arbitration Law, Law no 101/1987.

Recording and re-use of testimonies in Norwegian courts

In recent years, Norwegian courts have transitioned to near-full electronic communication between the parties and the courts. Court hearings are more and more often paperless, and the use of long-distance meetings and examinations by way of video link is increasing. In this article, we put the spotlight on another aspect of digitalisation that is currently …

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Luxembourg SIFs: the investment vehicle of choice to structure third-party funding activities

Basic principles of third-party funding Over the past 30 years, third-party dispute funding has experienced an exponential growth in civil and common law jurisdictions. As the common law doctrines of maintenance and champerty were softened or even abolished (most often in the context of international arbitration proceedings), third-party funding became a viable option for companies …

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28 USC §1782: a powerful tool for obtaining US discovery in aid of foreign proceedings

A key distinction between US and non-US litigation is the liberal discovery available to parties in the United States. However, non-US litigants have a powerful tool that can provide the benefit of US discovery rules to obtain broad discovery for use in proceedings abroad. United States Statute 28 USC §1782 empowers a district court to …

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Enforcing foreign arbitral awards in Turkey – not so easy and not so cheap

Turkey markets itself as an arbitration friendly country and, as parliamentary reports indicate, this is premised on its goal to foster foreign trade. However, its courts do not always practise what the state preaches and it may become quite burdensome and costly to try to enforce foreign arbitral awards.

Civil court delays: assessing new remedies to speed up Romanian disputes

As referred to in its case law, the European Court of Human Rights has imposed an obligation on states to provide a mechanism to prevent or remedy excessive length of judicial proceedings. Also, in several resolutions, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has stated that ‘excessive delays in the administration of justice constitute an …

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Special commercial proceedings: in-court reorganisation and cross-border insolvency in Mexico

The main methods of resolving commercial disputes in Mexico are: ordinary commercial trial, executive commercial trial, special proceedings, oral commercial trial, bankruptcy proceedings (concurso mercantil), arbitration, and mediation.

Hungary – discouraging litigation?

Since 2018, Hungary has a new act on civil court procedures (Act CXXX of 2017 – the Act) which has brought about significant reforms after 50 years. The reforms were aimed at healing previous shortcomings, such as lengthy and tedious procedures, and making court cases concise, yet professional in quite a tight structure. As almost …

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