A recent ruling shows that an arbitration agreement alone is not necessarily a complete defence to a Hong Kong winding-up petition.

The Hong Kong Companies Court recently issued a winding-up order against a debtor company, despite the presence of arbitration clauses in the agreements giving rise to the debt. In Re Simplicity & Vogue Retailing (HK) Co., Limited [2023] HKCFI 1443, Linda Chan J refused to apply the ratio in the Court of Final Appeal’s decision Re Guy Kwok Hung Lam [2023] HKCFA 9 (Guy Lam) (discussed in a previous Client Alert), in which the underlying dispute over the petition debt was the subject of an arbitration clause.