Biannual Banking Litigation Update (Spring 2023)

Welcome to the Spring 2023 edition of our biannual Banking Litigation Update, in which we highlight the most important cases and developments affecting UK financial institutions over the past six months.

In our last update, we discussed the increased risk of disputes arising from sanctions against Russian individuals and entities in light of the invasion of Ukraine. These developments pose many and varied legal issues for banks and we are now starting to see guidance emerge from the court. The Court of Appeal had the opportunity to consider whether a force majeure clause was engaged as a consequence of US sanctions imposed on a party's parent company in MUR Shipping (see case 21 in the update). Although force majeure clauses are a creature of contract, and each case will turn on the specific drafting and relevant factual matrix, the court took a pragmatic approach and found that payment in a currency other than US dollars (which was specified in the contract,