All Reasonable Endeavours: Latest Developments

What efforts does a party need to take to satisfy an obligation to use "all reasonable endeavours"?

In the recent case of Astor Management AG v Atalaya Mining plc [2017], the High Court disagreed with previous observations that an endeavours obligation is only enforceable if its object is certain and there are sufficient objective criteria to evaluate the attempt.

Instead, the judge considered that where a contract includes a test of "reasonableness", the parties are "deliberately inviting the court to make a value judgment" and the court should not decline to do so simply because the task is difficult. In this case, the court found that there was a legally enforceable obligation to use all reasonable endeavours to obtain a senior debt facility, even though that facility could have taken many different forms.