Further to the favourable ruling on liability by the arbitral tribunal in September 2021, we have recently won the second battle of the war by obtaining a favourable ruling on relief and award on various issues regarding modes of relief and quantification of damages against various BVI and PRC respondents for the same Mainland client in an arbitration at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.

The arbitral tribunal previously ruled in our client’s favour that the principal debtor failed to redeem the subject shares in the sum of around US$10,000,000 and a guarantor is jointly liable for such default. The arbitral tribunal was then invited to rule on whether specific performance is an appropriate relief for this matter. Parties argued extensively on whether there is sufficient market demand and marketability for the subject shares, whether damages are sufficient to compensate our client, practicability on carrying out the order for specific performance and the validity of a clause relating to damages for delay in performance. The arbitral tribunal eventually ruled in favour of almost all of our arguments and decided that specific performance is an appropriate relief, and adopted the practical mechanism of specific performance proposed by our firm. The arbitral tribunal also made our desired award that the respondents shall pay the requisite redemption fee and damages for delay in performance, with costs payable to our client.

The case was handled by our litigation partner Mr. Roy Leung with the assistance of our litigation associate Mr. Alan So. The arbitration was conducted in Chinese and Putonghua, and virtual hearing facilities were used for some witnesses in the PRC in giving evidence. As in many other cross-border arbitrations and litigations, we worked seamlessly with our Mainland client team and the PRC lawyer.