Commercial Arbitration

Arbitration in Hong Kong is governed by Cap. 609, the Arbitration Ordinance — a statute built on the 2006 version of the UNCITRAL Model Law and in force since 1 June 2011. As at this article’s verification date the consolidated text of Cap. 609 carries a version date of 16 December 2022: the last instrument to amend it was Ordinance No. 6 of 2022 on outcome related fee structures (ORFS). The Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, HKIAC, registered 582 new cases in 2025, of which 388 were arbitrations, with a total amount in dispute of HKD 126.2 billion.

The Mainland Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance (Cap. 645) is the Hong Kong statute under which, since 29 January 2024, an effective judgment of a Mainland Chinese court in a civil or commercial matter can be registered in the Court of First Instance of the Hong Kong High Court and enforced as if it were a Hong Kong judgment, and under which the holder of a Hong Kong judgment can obtain from the Hong Kong court a certified copy of that judgment, and a certificate in respect of it, for recognition and enforcement in the Mainland. The Ordinance implements the Arrangement on Reciprocal Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, signed by the Supreme People’s Court and the Government of the HKSAR on 18 January 2019 under Article 95 of the Basic Law. Compared with the earlier regime under Cap. 597, the new statute no longer requires an exclusive choice-of-court clause, covers non-monetary as well as monetary judgments, reaches judgments of courts at every level down to the Primary People’s Courts and extends to a defined range of intellectual property disputes. The registration application is made ex parte, the court fee is HK$1,045, the judgment debtor has 14 days after service of the notice of registration to apply to set the registration aside, and the gateway condition is a default in complying with the judgment that occurred within two years before the application.

Commercial arbitration in the UAE is governed by the federal Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 on Arbitration, but the actual landscape of arbitration institutions has changed substantially over the past five years.

A foreign judgment is enforced in the UAE under article 222 of the Civil Procedure Code — by petition to the execution judge, who issues an order within five working days and verifies six conditions without reopening the merits. Two zone routes run alongside it: the DIFC Courts, historically used as a conduit jurisdiction, and the ADGM Courts, which are expressly barred from being used that way. The route you choose determines not how fast you recover, but whether you reach the assets at all.