Litigation

AkzoNobel announced the sale of 100% of its Specialty Chemicals business to The Carlyle Group and GIC for an enterprise value of EUR 10.1 billion. This transaction creates two focused and high performing businesses – Paints and Coatings, and Specialty Chemicals – as part of its strategy announced in April 2017. The transaction is expected to be completed before the end of 2018.Team: Gaby Smeenk, Arne Grimme, Martin van Olffen, Henk van Ravenhorst, Reinier Kleipool, Janneke van der Kroon, Martijn Snoep, Heather Giannandrea and Thijs Elseman. For more information, read here.

De Brauw has acted for the National Bank of Kazakhstan in summary proceedings and secured the lifting of an attachment order that led to the freezing of EUR 22 billion in cash and securities belonging to the National Fund of Kazakhstan. This case involved issues of state immunity, Kazakh trust law, and English banking law. In light of recent enforcement actions by Moldovan investors Anatolie and Gabriel Stati and their companies in various other jurisdictions, including Sweden and England, this decision, rendered by former Supreme Court Justice Mr. F.B. Bakels, represents an important victory for the National Bank. The dispute arose out of a number of heavily-publicised enforcement actions recently taken by the Statis against assets of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the National Bank (the central bank of Kazakhstan) in several jurisdictions. The Statis levied attachments under BNY Mellon in September and October 2017, which led to the freezing of EUR 22 billion in cash and securities accounts of the National Bank, held with BNY Mellon. The National Bank's accounts with BNY Mellon are part of a National Fund for the Kazakh economy. De Brauw commenced summary proceedings on behalf of the National Bank to lift the attachments. The Republic of Kazakhstan and the BNY Mellon appeared as interested parties. On 9 January 2018, the hearing in the summary proceedings was held at the Amsterdam District Court before former Supreme Court Justice and current Preliminary Relief Judge Mr. F.B. Bakels. Albert Marsman and Marnix Leijten pled on behalf of the National Bank at the hearing. Preliminary Relief Judge F.B. Bakels rendered a decision on 23 January 2018, lifting the attachment on the accounts with BNY Mellon on the basis of two separate grounds raised by the National Bank. The successful lifting of the attachment has been publicised in various media outlets. On 24 January 2018, Reuters Business News included an article reporting on the decision of 23 January 2018. Reuters reports that the freeze, now successfully lifted, "had shocked the oil-exporting nation and the sovereign fund industry". On the same day, Global Arbitration Review (GAR) was also headlined with an article on the recent summary proceedings before the District Court of Amsterdam and its connection to a number of cases in various jurisdictions. De Brauw's Albert Marsman was approached for comment by the GAR: "Partner Albert Marsman of De Brauw welcomes yesterday’s decision, which he says “confirms that the National Bank of Kazakhstan’s funds cannot be the subject of attachment by purported creditors of the Republic. The court also made clear that it does not accept information being concealed in an attachment application, and imposed a significant fine for any future failure to be transparent.” Team: Albert Marsman (lead partner), Marnix Leijten, Abdel Zirar, Esther Huijzer, Gianni Molewijk, Varvara Aryutina, Alessio Gracis, Ondine Sinsheimer. Read more at GAR and Reuters.

Protecting the weaker party against unfair trading practices has long been the exclusive domain of consumer law. In business-to-business (B2B) relationships, the prohibition of abuse of dominance is relevant but has led to few cases, as exploitative abuse has not been an enforcement priority and the prerequisite of dominance is hard to prove.

In our litigation practice we often see that Dutch law presents surprises to parties that concluded a commercial contract. This can relate to pre-contractual liability, interpretation, the validity of certain clauses and termination. Daan Beenders and Johan Valk wrote an article about this. They discuss a number of surprises and explain how the parties can prevent or mitigate these surprises and the associated risks as much as possible. The article was published in a Dutch law journal (Maandblad voor Vermogensrecht). Click here to read the online article (in Dutch) and here for an English translation in PDF.

Bommel van der Bend and Sebastien Davys-Brown wrote an article for Who's Who Legal in May 2021. They believe that additional efficiencies in project dispute resolution can be achieved by (i) providing additional legal competence to the project team and (ii) adopting "active claim management" methods to identify, review and analyse issues around the disputed areas of a project at the same time. The goal being to develop an informed and legally consistent strategy so that appropriate decisions can be made to resolve the dispute at the time it occurs. Click here to read the online article and here for the PDF.