Paul, Weiss is widely recognized as having one of the nation’s preeminent securities litigation and regulatory practices. For two decades, our lawyers have guided global corporations and financial institutions through a series of “bet-the-company” securities-related crises, consistently reducing or eliminating their most damaging claims and negotiating favorable resolutions.
Citigroup Wins Major Appeal Cutting Off Efforts to Enforce Vacated Arbitration Award in France
- Client News
- December 10, 2024
Practices
Paul, Weiss and French co-counsel at A&O Shearman won a significant victory for Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. (CGMI), when the Versailles Court of Appeal reversed an order that had allowed a former Citi client to attempt to enforce in France an arbitration award issued and vacated in the United States. The French court held, as a matter of first impression, that a plaintiff seeking to enforce a foreign arbitration award in France through an exequatur order—a judicial procedure that allows a foreign court judgment to be enforced in another country—must do so within five years.
This win is the culmination of more than 15 years of litigation, across seven different cases in New York and French courts, that began when the plaintiff reneged on a settlement he had entered into with CGMI in 2012 to resolve a FINRA dispute over the way his investments were managed. An arbitration panel adjudicated the dispute in his favor in spite of the prior settlement. Paul, Weiss won vacatur of the arbitration award in the New York Supreme Court in 2014, and that decision was affirmed on appeal. Undeterred, the plaintiff subsequently filed numerous challenges in New York state and federal courts to reinstate his vacated award, which led to sanctions, contempt orders, and even a warrant for his arrest.
Unsatisfied with the New York courts, the plaintiff exploited a loophole in France that allows parties to enforce vacated arbitration awards, and seize assets on an ex parte basis, if assets can be located in France. Over the past six years, litigation in France has focused on whether CGMI can assert certain procedural defenses to such seizure orders. In April 2023, the French Supreme Court agreed with CGMI that the Paris Court of Appeal had erred in determining that it could not consider CGMI’s defenses, and remanded the case to the Versailles Court of Appeal. On December 10, the Versailles Court of Appeal held that the plaintiff was too late in seeking enforcement of the arbitration award because more than five years had passed between the issuance of the arbitration award and his 2018 application for the order.
The Paul, Weiss team includes litigation partners Audra Soloway and Janus Schutte, of counsel partner Gerard Harper and numerous former Paul, Weiss attorneys and paralegals who have contributed to this case over the years.