15 July 2015

BLC Banking & Finance Insights (July 2015): Apartes with Professor Philip R Wood CBE, QC (Hon)

The intricacies of taking security in crossborder and global transactions are the subject of ceaseless discussions both between practitioners and academics in many jurisdictions. In some instances debate has prompted extensive, and in others, limited reforms in this area. For a couple of years now Mauritius has been thinking of reforming the law applicable to secured transactions, which is founded in the Mauritius Code Civil and the Code de Commerce, themselves built on the Napoleonic codes.

In issuing a reform paper on Secured Transactions Reform in 2013, the Mauritius Law Reform Commission considered, amongst other things, the 2006 French Reform, the World Bank technical reports, the Article 9 of the American Uniform Commercial Code, Personal Property Acts, the 2007 United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) guide on secured transactions and the OHADA Acte Uniforme Révisé. 

However no amendment to the legislation is yet in the pipeline. The Mauritius Law Reform Commission’s 2013 paper was part of the discussions during the April 2015 seminar on the Droit du contrat et des suretes dans l’Ocean Indien organised by the Mauritius Institute for Judicial and Legal Studies under the aegis of l’Association Henri Capitant, the Centre de Recherche Juridique of Reunion Island and the French Institut de Recherche en Droit des Affaires.

We have asked Prof. Philip R Wood CBE, QC (Hon) his views on how the 2007 UNCITRAL Guide on Secured Transactions (UNCITRAL Guide) could assist in the modernisation of Mauritius secured transactions law.

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