WS Tankship II BV –v- Kwangju Bank Limited & Anor [2011] EWHC 3103 (Comm)
In an obiter statement, the High Court has stated that a guarantee issued and sent by SWIFT messaging was "in writing and signed by the party to be charged" for the purpose of Section 4 of the Statute to Frauds 1677 and therefore validly executed. The name o fthe guarantor appeared only in the header of the guarantee where it had been automatically inserted by the SWIFT messaging system.
There have been other cases relating to faxes and emails where it was held that there must be more than an automatic name added, but the difference in this case seems to have been that the SWIFT message was the culmination of a number of messages on the subject.
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