Introduction

Summary

This book evaluates thirty years of cases arising from the global derivatives markets. This period starts with the landmark House of Lords’ decision in Hazell v. Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council, takes us through the surge of litigation triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis and up to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. The book details how these cases have evolved in line with the markets themselves, growing more complex, more international and more technically challenging over time, but it also identifies remarkably consistent legal themes. Most importantly, it finds that the process of resolving disputes between participants in the derivatives markets across this period has, after a notorious start, been a source of robust rules for this systemically significant sector of the global financial markets and has helped to shape commercial law more broadly. This study also finds, however, that are important and ongoing challenges associated with this recent manifestation of ‘international business justice’.