English commercial law, like football, has been exported around the world. The game has been honed, and star players signed. Globalisation is both bringing more business to London, and creating new courts such as that in Nur-Sultan. That means jobs for British lawyers, and new competition for London.
Commercial courts underpin globalisation, assuring investors their rights will be protected when they venture abroad. They are also functions of it, for parties are free to choose where to go should things go wrong. For traders in medieval Europe, that was Bruges and Antwerp. Today, it’s often London.
But that dominance is under pressure, from Brexit and tougher competition. The clientele in London is growing, but also becoming more domestic: Brits accounted for more than half of litigants last year, for the first time since Portland’s survey began, while those from Europe and the rest of the world have fallen as a share, to 12% and 35% respectively .
The result will be fragmentation, as judgments become more costly to enforce. Lawyers expect some litigation will shift to Europe. Since the Brexit vote, English-speaking commercial courts have opened in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris and Amsterdam, and some academics want a single European court to rival London. It would be “ridiculous” if English judgments went unenforced, says Duco Oranje, a judge of the Netherlands Commercial Court.