In cross-border disputes, winning a claim is only half the battle. Enforcing judgments poses multiple legal and strategic issues. The complexities of cross-border disputes came under the microscope at a roundtable at Ashurst Perkins Coie’s offices, hosted by The Global Legal Post and Osborne Clarke.
The roundtable was chaired by Osborne Clarke disputes partner Andrew Bartlett, general editor of GLP's Enforcement of Judgments comparative guide. The London International Disputes Week event was held to mark the guide’s official launch. The debate featured many of the book’s authors, with specialists from Nigeria, Italy, Cyprus, Jersey, Luxembourg, Germany, Singapore and the US joining Bartlett to discuss important legal developments in their jurisdictions as well as strategies to overcome the most common obstacles in cross-border enforcement cases.
This coverage of the session has been brought up to date with additional commentary from the participants, where necessary.
A shifting enforcement landscape
Bartlett kicked off the discussion by observing that the UK's withdrawal from the European Union had not had a dramatic impact on enforcement despite it causing significant changes to the legal framework. The Hague Convention on Choice of Courts applies to disputes that include exclusive jurisdiction clauses, while the 2019 Hague Convention offers an efficient means of enforcing a broader range of judgments, he said. In cases where neither convention applies, enforcement in the UK is left to the common law system, which may be slower in practice but is still a reliable solution.
The roundtable went on to hear how some jurisdictions have implemented reforms that make the enforcement of judgments easier, at least in some respects.
In 2022, Jersey introduced a winding-up procedure which Lynne Gregory, a partner at Baker & Partners, described as “a huge improvement for creditors”. She said the scheme had transformed what was an archaic insolvency process based on French law into a modern one. It allows creditors to initiate winding-up proceedings in a similar manner to creditors in most major jurisdictions and to appoint insolvency practitioners from the major accountancy firms rather than being restricted to the appointment of a government official.
She said creditors armed with an overseas judgment could proceed straight to winding-up proceedings without engaging with the complexity of first recognising an international judgment in Jersey. This approach has been endorsed by the Jersey Court of Appeal and was backed by the UK Supreme Court in July 2026, when it overturned the Court of Appeal ruling in Servis-Terminal v Drelle, which had cast doubt on Jersey’s position by potentially requiring creditors to have foreign judgments formally recognised in Jersey before pursuing winding-up proceedings.
Moving to Nigeria, Chinasa Unaegbunam, managing partner of Streamsowers & Köhn in Lagos, described the Arbitration and Mediation Act 2023 as a key development in the dispute resolution space. The Act directly incorporates the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (New York Convention) and provides more clarity on the requirements to set aside awards. She explained: “Parties can now obtain interim relief from the arbitral tribunal and need not apply or go to court for interim measures. There’s a clearer path to enforcement in Nigeria, and the courts are leaning more to upholding arbitral awards.”
There has also been a major change in Italy’s enforcement regime thanks to its 2022 Cartabia reform of civil procedure, which has made foreign arbitral awards immediately enforceable once recognised by the Italian courts, according to Federico Banti, Osborne Clarke’s Italy head of dispute resolution. Previously, the process could be stalled if the debtor challenged the decree of recognition, whereas under the new regime, a creditor with a foreign award can “start enforcement immediately after the decree is issued by the competent court and may immediately attach the debtor’s goods.”
Significantly, arbitrators can now also grant interim measures and creditors have direct access to court bailiffs for asset searches through tax registries and state archives without needing a court petition, said Banti.
Perhaps the most far-reaching reform cited during the discussion was in Cyprus, which adopted new civil procedure rules in 2023, replacing a framework from the 1950s. The headline change is the availability of freestanding interim orders in aid of foreign proceedings anywhere in the world, Marina Hadjisoteriou of Patrikios Legal said.
"If you have the freezing order in place from day one, at least you have some comfort that when you win the case, you will be able to enforce it," she said. "Otherwise, you are left with a simple paper; you can put it on the wall, you can be happy you won, but it doesn't really help the client." The test for a free-standing freezing order is that the respondent is in Cyprus; or the assets are in Cyprus; or there is a “sufficient connecting link” to Cyprus. Hadjisoteriou said the connection to Cyprus element was interpreted broadly.
Creative strategies
The roundtable went on to identify creative strategies to recover assets shielded by corporate structures, a common problem when seeking to enforce judgments.
Banti recommended attaching shares held by the debtor in Italian companies, a tactic that can put pressure on the company’s directors and shareholders. “If the debtor has interest in the company, this may leverage a settlement," he said.
In Cyprus, winding-up petitions can be filed for debts as low as €5,000. "You can serve the winding-up petition on any banks you think work with the company, and then obviously the bank will not be very happy," said Hadjisoteriou. "It causes reputational and commercial pressure."
Gregory cited a memorable Jersey case in which contempt proceedings were brought against Monaco-based Princess Camilla de Bourbon des Deux Siciles after she failed to comply with an order to disclose information about her mother’s assets. She was fined £2m, with a 12-month prison sentence in default.
Future revenue streams
A particularly knotty problem can be obtaining future assets when no individual jurisdiction meets all the requirements for a garnishee order allowing a creditor to intercept money owed to a debtor by a third party. In most common law jurisdictions, to meet the criteria for a garnishee order, the third-party debtor must be present in the jurisdiction, and the debt must also be situated there.
In a cross-border scenario, when seeking to enforce against debts owed by third parties to the judgment debtor, the conditions for granting a garnishee-type order may not be met in any jurisdiction. As Bartlett noted: “There might be nowhere in the world where you could get some sort of attachment or garnishee order – that is when receivership orders can be particularly useful”.
The available options vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the US, the equitable powers of the courts include the ability to issue orders requiring assets to be turned over and the appointment of receivers or trustees “to take over the company and then direct the payments”, explained Steven Davidson, a partner at Steptoe in Washington.
In Luxembourg, the position is relatively straightforward once a judgment has been recognised. A creditor can obtain an attachment ex parte, served directly on the banks. The key here is timing – and what Olivier Marquais, a counsel at Loyens & Loeff, called the “photography principle”. The judgment creditor attaches whatever is in the bank account at the moment the freezing order is served. The effect is immediate.
Amounts subsequently transferred into the account are not normally attached. However, exceptionally, they may fall within the scope of the attachment if there is a link to a pre-existing obligation. For example, if the creditor is aware of a bond issuance and knows when coupon payments are due to investors (information that asset tracers can help obtain), they can attach the account in the hands of the paying agent shortly before the payments are made. Amounts paid into the account after the attachment writ has been served may then be attached, preventing their distribution.
Singapore courts, meanwhile, are reluctant to grant garnishee orders against foreign debtors. "You do not want to subject the third-party debtor to a double jeopardy situation," said Wendy Lin, head of asset recovery at Wong Partnership. However, she added that if the underlying contract is governed by Singapore law, there is scope to overcome any concerns.
Interest and currency
The discussion moved on to post-judgment interest rates, which vary wildly across jurisdictions. "New York has a very high rate, I think it's 9%," said Davidson. "It's good to shop a little, because we've had cases where a billion-dollar judgment got close to no interest for years because the T-bill rate was functionally zero." The UK default is 8%, Singapore's is 5.33%.
Currency risk was also a discussion point. In the US, judgments are converted to dollars at recognition. "If you're worried about the decline of the currency value, if you get it dollarised in the United States, that'll be a big help," said Davidson. Singapore, however, keeps the foreign currency until execution. Lin said this was "the fairest way to everyone and probably closest to what the creditor bargained for".
Punitive damages
Until recently, it had been widely assumed that a foreign judgment including punitive damages could be divided into separate elements, allowing the compensatory portion to be enforced in England and Wales. "I had always understood that you could sever the judgment into separate parts: the costs part, the compensatory part of the damages, and the parts relating to double or triple damages, and you could enforce those basic parts which aren't punitive," Bartlett said.
However, the December 2025 English Court of Appeal ruling in Motorola v Hytera challenged that assumption, finding that the prohibition on enforcing multiple damages awards also extended to the compensatory element. Bartlett explained the new position. "Under English law, the whole judgment is treated as a multiple damages award, and the whole judgment is unenforceable, which I thought was a pretty surprising outcome."
Davidson commented: "I think the court felt that the punitive nature of the underlying jury verdict sort of infected the whole case.”
In Singapore, the position is "unsurprisingly similar to England – we will enforce the compensatory part and not enforce the punitive part," said Lin. But "the difficulty may arise in situations where the judgment just awards a single amount and doesn't break it down". Lin's advice was practical: "If you know you're going to enforce in a different jurisdiction, it may be that you need to break your judgment up into two different amounts."
Germany and Luxembourg take a similar approach, enforcing only the compensatory element, the roundtable heard. "Civil law recognises only compensation for actual harm," said Christoph Kauffmann, a partner at Osborne Clarke in Germany.
Default judgments
The roundtable concluded with a look at default judgments, which are enforceable in principle, but can pose issues in diverse jurisdictions. Lin shared details of a case which hinged on a decision made by an American defendant that he came to regret. He regularly travelled to Seoul but was not there when the claim was filed. He then appealed the judgment on the merits, and the Singapore courts held that by doing so, he had submitted to the Korean court's jurisdiction. "I think in that case you would have been much better off just not contesting the Korean court judgment," she said.
The Global Legal Post guide to Enforcement of Judgments is written by leading practitioners from jurisdictions around the world and is available online as a downloadable PDF and for purchase as a hard-copy guide. Learn more and download the PDF of the Enforcement of Judgments guide.
The guide is one of the titles in the Law Over Borders series, which also covers topics including arbitration, class actions, commercial litigation, artificial intelligence, crypto assets, data protection, ESG, merger control, restructuring and insolvency, luxury law and fashion law.
Forthcoming guides include: Corporate Governance, Mining, Blockchain, Child Relocation, Private Client ang Gaming.
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