Khawar Qureshi QC considers the enforcement of a foreign judgment against a sovereign state
In Republic of Argentina and NML Capital Limited [2010] EWCA Civ 41 (NML) the Court of Appeal granted an appeal from the order of Blair J dated January 29 2009. Blair J had confirmed that a hedge fund was entitled to bring an action in England to enforce a summary judgment obtained on May 11 2006 in the US courts against Argentina for the sum of around US$284m.
The claim arose from default on bond payments by Argentina in the aftermath of its financial crisis in late 2000. NML had acquired the rights arising under the bond instruments and, at first instance, Argentina had, inter-alia, argued but failed to persuade Blair J that NML should not be granted any relief because entities such as NML (sometimes called “vulture funds”) existed solely to acquire distressed sovereign debt and to pursue claims aggressively—some form of “public policy” contention appears to have underpinned Argentina’s argument in this regard. However, the nature of NML and its business rationale were held to be irrelevant for this
