Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom and Ireland

Related legal acts

Key definition

Forum shopping definition

What does Forum shopping mean? The deliberate selection or engineering of a court or jurisdiction perceived to offer the most advantageous law, procedure, timetable, costs, or remedies for a dispute, restructuring or insolvency. The term is descriptive (often pejorative) rather than statutory, though it is discussed in case law and practice across litigation and insolvency. Common techniques include invoking jurisdiction or choice‑of‑law clauses, issuing first to “seise” a court, establishing a sufficient connection to use an English scheme of arrangement or restructuring plan, or relocating a company’s centre of main interests (COMI) or registered office to open main insolvency proceedings. Courts in England...

Forum shopping in cross-border insolvency: COMI migration, safeguards, leading cases, practical steps, alternatives and future trends

Published by a LexisNexis Restructuring & Insolvency expert

Practice notes

Rationale

In any cross-border matter involving a formal Insolvency process, restructuring advisers will consider which jurisdictions are open for proceedings and weigh the respective pros and cons of each (see Practice Note: Table of advantages and disadvantages of restructuring in various jurisdictions worldwide). As the concept of a Centre of Main Interests (COMI) appears in Regulation (EU) 2015/848, the Recast Regulation on Insolvency [EU Recast Regulation on Insolvency], and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (see: UNCITRAL Model Law and Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations 2006 (CBIR)—overview), practitioners may, where time allows, explore Forum shopping—also called ‘insolvency tourism’ or ‘jurisdictional arbitrage’—to shift a company’s COMI, regardless of its place of incorporation or registered office, to a jurisdiction with a more favourable restructuring or insolvency framework. Ironically, the incidence of forum shopping has grown since these instruments were introduced, despite the express wording in the predecessor to the EU Recast Regulation on Insolvency, Recital 4 of Regulation (EC) 1346/2000, that: ‘It is necessary for the proper functioning of the internal market to avoid incentives for the parties to transfer assets or judicial proceedings from one Member State to another, seeking to obtain a’...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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