Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
2010
JACK: DOCUMENTARY CREDITS: The law and practice of documentary credits including standby credits and demand guarantees (4th Edition). Ali Malek, QC, MA, BCL, Bencher of Gray’s Inn, and David Quest, MA, Barrister (GI). Tottel, Hayward’s Heath (2009) xxxix and 442 pp, plus 100 pp Appendices and 14 pp Index. Hardback £235.
This excellent book provides a detailed and lucid account of how documentary credit transactions work and explains the rights and liabilities of each of the parties in the chain of complex relationships involved.
This fourth edition maintains the clear and accessible structure of the third edition. It begins with an introduction to documentary credits and an explanation of the different types of documentary credit. There is then a thorough and careful analysis of the various relationships in a documentary credit transaction, including: the relationship between the parties to the underlying contract (usually a contract for the international sale of goods); those between the applicant (the buyer) and the issuing bank, the issuing bank and the beneficiary (the seller), the confirming bank and the beneficiary; the role of the correspondent bank; and the relationship between the collecting bank and the negotiation bank. There is also a discussion of: the duties of the parties in relation to documents and their examination by the banks; the use of injunctions as a legal response to the problem of fraud; the related instruments of standby credits and demand guarantees. Issues of conflict of laws issues (jurisdiction and choice of law) are examined in a chapter which also deals with illegality, exchange control and, very briefly, sovereign immunity. The work closes with a very short chapter on electronic credits.
This fourth edition is justified by developments in the case law and the publication by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) of a number of uniform rules in this field. The ICC Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits, 2007 Revision (UCP 600) together with the Supplement to the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits for Electronic Presentation (eUCP) entered into force in July 2007. In 2003 the ICC published the International Standard Banking Practice for the Examination of Documents under Documentary Credits (ISBP) (ICC Publication 645) and in 2007 a new version was issued following publication of UCP 600...
Nelson Enonchong
Barber Professor of Law, University of Birmingham