THE RATIO. One judgment, decoded twice: once for anyone, once for the profession.

Case Details

  • Citation: [2026] FCA 1152; NSD 1370 of 2026
  • Court: Federal Court of Australia, General Division, New South Wales Registry
  • Heard and orders made: 14 August 2026 (ex parte)
  • Reasons published: 17 August 2026
  • Counsel or Representation: R Turnbull for the applicants, instructed by Clayton Utz; no appearance for either respondent, the application being made ex parte
  • Governing provisions: International Arbitration Act 1974 (Cth), ss 3(1), 8(3), 8(5), 8(7), 9(1)(a)-(b), and Sch 1; Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth), s 52(2)(b); Federal Court Rules 2011 (Cth), rr 1.34, 28.44(b)(i)-(ii), and 39.06; New York Convention, art II(1)
  • Key precedents applied: Siemens WLL v BIC Contracting LLC [2022] FCA 1029; StoneX Financial Inc v Ambrose [2023] FCA 1568; StoneX Financial Inc v Ambrose (No 2) [2024] FCA 501; Hankuk Carbon Co Ltd v Energy World Corporation Ltd [2024] FCA 232; Ripple Markets APAC Pte Ltd v EzyRemit Worldwide Pty Ltd [2025] FCA 1551; Blasket Renewable Investments LLC v Kingdom of Spain (relief) [2025] FCA 1469; Traxys Europe SA v Balaji Coke Industry Pvt Ltd (No 2) [2012] FCA 276; 201 FCR 535
  • Key paragraphs: [17]-[25] (statutory requirements for enforcement of a foreign award), [26]-[30] (ex parte relief and the stay pending a return date), [31]-[34] (currency conversion date and post judgment interest rate)
  • Outcome: Application granted; judgment entered jointly and severally against both respondents for approximately AUD 1,930,499.41 plus post judgment interest at the award rate; orders stayed until 2 October 2026 to allow the respondents to apply to set them aside

Headnote

A share sale between a Hong Kong and Chinese buyer and a Trinidadian seller, backed by an Australian listed guarantor, fell into dispute and went to arbitration in London. The buyer won a substantial counterclaim for unpaid amounts, arbitration costs, and legal costs. When the losing parties did not pay, the buyer asked the Federal Court of Australia to convert the award into an ordinary Australian court judgment, without notifying the losing side first, so that it could be enforced against local and other assets. The Court granted the application, and used the occasion to work through, step by step, the technical questions that come with turning a multi currency foreign award into a single Australian dollar judgment.

Factual Background

On 2 September 2019, New JCM Group Co Ltd (then called LandOcean Energy Services Co Ltd, incorporated in China) and LandOcean Hong Kong Investment Holding Group Ltd entered a share purchase agreement with Star Phoenix Group Ltd (then Range Resources Ltd, an Australian company) and West Indies Exploration Company Ltd, a Trinidad and Tobago company, for the sale of all shares in Range Resources Trinidad Ltd. West Indies Exploration was the seller and LandOcean HK the buyer. The agreement contained a dispute resolution clause providing for arbitration before a three member tribunal under the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) Rules. The agreement was later amended several times, including by a side letter in March 2020, without disturbing the arbitration clause. Under the amended agreement, New JCM and Star Phoenix each took on their subsidiaries’ liabilities and agreed to resolve disputes under the same arbitration clause. Separately, on 31 March 2020, Star Phoenix and Range Resources Trinidad Ltd signed a related instrument called the Waiver Deed, which contained its own LCIA arbitration clause providing for a sole arbitrator.

Disputes followed. West Indies Exploration and Star Phoenix started arbitration as claimants against LandOcean HK and New JCM. A three member tribunal, comprising Thomas Webster as presiding arbitrator, Benny Lo, and Ruth Teitelbaum, was constituted in October 2021. LandOcean HK and New JCM brought a counterclaim with two components, one arising from the amended sale agreement itself and a second relying on the Waiver Deed, even though the tribunal had been constituted under the sale agreement’s clause rather than the Waiver Deed’s own clause. No party challenged the tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear either part of the counterclaim. The claimants’ representation shifted partway through the arbitration from external lawyers to one of their own directors, Mu Luo.

The tribunal issued its final award on 16 October 2024, seated in London, upholding the sale agreement based counterclaim and dismissing the Waiver Deed based counterclaim, though the dismissal was factored into costs in the respondents’ favour. The award held West Indies Exploration and Star Phoenix jointly and severally liable to pay amounts in three different currencies, Trinidad and Tobago dollars, pounds sterling, and US dollars, with interest at 8 per cent per year compounding quarterly. A minor addendum followed in December 2024 without affecting the substance of the relief. Neither respondent paid any part of the award. After a letter of demand in July 2026, Star Phoenix, replying through Mr Luo, acknowledged its obligations in principle but said it could not presently meet the demand given its financial position, and referred to other litigation affecting the company, without disputing that the award was enforceable. LandOcean HK and New JCM then applied to the Federal Court, without notice to the respondents, to have the award enforced as a judgment of the Court.

The Question for Determination

In everyday terms, the question was whether a company that won an arbitration case in London could turn that award into an ordinary Australian court judgment without first telling the losing side, and if so, on what terms, given that the amounts owed were in three different currencies and the award carried its own interest rate.

Framed precisely, the Court had to determine whether the applicants had established the statutory and procedural preconditions for enforcement of a foreign award under s 8(3) of the International Arbitration Act 1974 (Cth), including that the award was a foreign award, that certified and authentic copies of the award and the arbitration agreement had been produced under s 9(1)(a) and (b), and that the affidavit evidence of non-compliance and of the respondents’ registered offices satisfied r 28.44 of the Federal Court Rules 2011 (Cth); whether it was appropriate to grant that relief ex parte, subject to a stay pending an opportunity for the respondents to apply to set the orders aside; and what date should be used to convert the multiple foreign currency amounts into Australian dollars, and what rate of post judgment interest should apply.

The Court’s Reasoning

Stewart J worked through the statutory checklist for enforcing a foreign award methodically. On whether the award was a “foreign award” at all, his Honour confirmed, consistent with his own earlier decisions in Siemens WLL and StoneX Financial Inc v Ambrose, that an award made in a foreign state qualifies regardless of whether that state is a Convention country. Because the seat of this arbitration was London, the award plainly qualified, which meant the applicants need not have gone to the length of formally proving the United Kingdom’s status as a Convention country by departmental certificate. His Honour noted that, given how settled this point now is, a future applicant’s entitlement to recover the cost of proving it unnecessarily may itself become a live question.

On authenticity, the absence of a version of the award bearing a handwritten signature was not an obstacle. Only an electronically signed version had ever been produced or circulated, and the Court accepted the certified copy tendered as both duly certified and genuine, satisfying s 9(1)(a) for the award and s 9(1)(b) for the arbitration agreement. On the requirement to show non-compliance with the award “at the date the application is made”, the applicants’ affidavit had in fact been sworn some twelve days before the originating application was filed, technically missing the mark set by r 28.44(2)(b)(i). Rather than refuse the application on that basis, the Court accepted counsel’s confirmation at the hearing that nothing had been paid, treated the requirement as substantially met, waived strict compliance under r 1.34, and proceeded on the applicants’ undertaking to file a further affidavit, which was later done. The remaining statutory conditions, evidence of the respondents’ last known registered offices, arbitrability of the underlying commercial dispute, and identity between the parties to the arbitration agreement and the award, were each found to be satisfied without difficulty.

Turning to the form of relief, the Court accepted that it was appropriate to proceed without notice to the respondents and to enter judgment subject to a stay until a return date, consistent with the approach in Hankuk Carbon. Nothing before the Court, including Star Phoenix’s own response to the demand letter, suggested any genuine ground on which enforcement might be resisted under the limited defences available in ss 8(5) and (7) of the Act. The stay mechanism, requiring the applicants to serve the orders, reasons, and supporting material on the respondents by a fixed date, and giving the respondents until three days before the return date to apply to set the orders aside, was treated as the safeguard that made the ex parte course appropriate.

Finally, on the mechanics of relief, the Court addressed two practical questions in some depth. On the exchange rate date, the usual practice of converting foreign currency amounts at the rate applicable the day before judgment, as in Ripple Markets, was adjusted here to two days before, because no Reserve Bank of Australia rate exists for converting Trinidad and Tobago dollars directly into Australian dollars. The applicants instead converted via the rate published by the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago into US dollars and then into Australian dollars at the RBA rate, and the Court accepted that the same two day reference point should apply consistently across all the currencies involved. On post judgment interest, the Court preferred the award’s own rate of 8 per cent per year, compounding quarterly, over the Court’s standard statutory rate of 10.5 per cent simple interest under r 39.06, so that the judgment would not depart materially from the terms of the award itself, following Traxys Europe, Blasket Renewable Investments, and Ripple Markets, and exercising the discretion in s 52(2)(b) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) to that effect.

Critical Assessment

The Court’s observation that the applicants need not have proved the United Kingdom’s status as a Convention country, and its flag that the cost of doing so unnecessarily might not be recoverable, is a genuinely useful piece of housekeeping. The point has now been made in at least three decisions of the same judge, and steering practitioners away from routinely padding these applications with unnecessary certificates is a small but real contribution to keeping enforcement proceedings efficient, which matters given how many of them proceed ex parte and on tight timeframes.

The willingness to treat the r 28.44(2)(b)(i) affidavit timing defect as cured by counsel’s oral confirmation at the hearing, with a later affidavit filed to make it good, sits less comfortably. The rule requires evidence of non-compliance current to the date of filing precisely because the Court is being asked to act on one side’s account alone, with no respondent present to test it. Accepting an assurance from the bar table in that setting is pragmatic, and nothing suggests the outcome was actually in doubt here, but it is the kind of procedural shortcut that carries more risk, not less, in an ex parte hearing than it would in an ordinary contested one.

That asymmetry is a structural feature of this type of application rather than a flaw specific to this case. The entire hearing proceeded on the applicants’ own account of non-payment and of the respondents’ position, tested against nothing but a demand letter and Star Phoenix’s own reply, which did not dispute enforceability. The judgment does not pretend otherwise, and the stay and return day mechanism it applies exists precisely to let the respondents contest anything the ex parte hearing could not test, which is the accepted answer to that imbalance rather than an oversight in this particular reasoning.

The reasoning on currency conversion timing and the comparison between the award’s compounding interest rate and the Court’s own simple interest rate is a good example of a court engaging carefully with arithmetic questions that are easy to wave through. Explaining why a Trinidad and Tobago dollar conversion needed an extra day, and why the award rate was preferred even though it is not always the higher effective rate, gives future litigants and their advisers a transparent, reasoned template for currency and interest questions that recur in almost every multi currency enforcement application of this kind.

Implications

If you’re not a lawyer: When a business wins an arbitration case in one country, such as London, and the other side refuses to pay, the winner often needs a court in a different country to turn that arbitration award into an ordinary court judgment before it can actually collect, for example by going after bank accounts or property. This case shows that Australian courts can do that quickly and without warning the other side in advance, as long as there is a fair chance afterward for the losing side to object. It also shows the practical complications that come with international debts: money awarded in three different currencies had to be converted into Australian dollars using a specific, carefully explained method, and the court had to work out which interest rate should keep running until the debt is actually paid.

For the profession: The decision is a useful checklist case for s 8(3) applications. It confirms, again, that “foreign award” status under the Act turns on the seat of arbitration rather than the seat state’s Convention membership, and flags a possible costs consequence for tendering unnecessary Convention country proof. It shows the Court’s tolerance, though not its endorsement as best practice, for curing an r 28.44(2)(b)(i) affidavit timing defect through an undertaking given at an ex parte hearing. The reasoning on exchange rate timing confirms the day before rule from Ripple Markets as the default while allowing a principled departure where no direct RBA rate exists, and the post judgment interest analysis reinforces the now well established line, from Traxys Europe through Blasket Renewable Investments to this judgment, that courts will generally preserve an award’s own interest rate and compounding terms under s 52(2)(b) rather than substitute the Court’s standard rate.