廈門新景地集團有限公司formerly Known As 廈門市鑫新景地房地產有限公司 v. Eton Properties Ltd and Another

On 14 September 2026, Deputy High Court Judge Gary CC Lam handed down judgment in HCCT 105/2026, granting the Plaintiff an anti-suit injunction restraining the Defendants from pursuing a new PRC action in Xiamen and ordering them to discontinue those proceedings. Mr Bernard Man SC, leading Mr James Man and Mr Jonathan Ng (instructed by Anthony Siu & Co), acted for the successful Plaintiff.

The dispute arises from a 2003 agreement under which the Plaintiff agreed to purchase shares in a Hong Kong company that indirectly held rights to develop land in Xiamen. The agreement was governed by PRC law with a CIETAC arbitration clause. After the Defendants purported to terminate the agreement and restructured their corporate holdings to evade performance, the Plaintiff obtained a CIETAC award in 2006 ordering continued performance. Enforcement in the PRC failed because the Defendants were Hong Kong companies, so the Plaintiff came to Hong Kong, obtained a statutory judgment, and ultimately pursued a common law action for breach of the implied promise to honour the award. The Court of Final Appeal (Ribeiro PJ) confirmed in [2020] HKCFA 32 that this implied promise is a separate cause of action governed by Hong Kong law, distinct from the underlying PRC-law contract. After quantum was assessed at RMB169 million and upheld on appeal, the Defendants commenced a new action in the Xiamen Intermediate People's Court alleging that the Plaintiff had maliciously evaded the arbitration clause by using the Hong Kong common law cause of action.

The Court held that:

(1) The Defendants' new PRC action was instituted in bad faith, was vexatious and oppressive, and constituted an illegitimate interference with Hong Kong court processes and judgments (§§57(9)-(11)).

(2) The action was an attempt to relitigate issues already determined by the Hong Kong courts and the CIETAC tribunal, namely that enforcement of the award is governed by Hong Kong law and is distinct from enforcement of the underlying agreement (§58).

(3) The Defendants' attempt to equate enforcement of the award with enforcement of the agreement was inaccurate and disingenuous, given the CFA's clear holding that the two are conceptually and substantively different (§57(1)).

(4) The Plaintiff was entitled to exercise its right to enforce the award through the Hong Kong common law cause of action, and the Defendants' allegation of malice was itself an abuse of process (§57(2)-(8)).

The Court ordered the Defendants restrained from pursuing the PRC action and required them to discontinue it by 18 September 2026. Costs were awarded to the Plaintiff on an indemnity basis with a certificate for three counsel, given the Defendants' conduct.

For practitioners, this judgment confirms that where a party loses in Hong Kong enforcement proceedings and then seeks to relitigate the same issues in a foreign court by reframing enforcement of an arbitral award as enforcement of the underlying contract, the Hong Kong court will grant an anti-suit injunction. The case also clarifies that vexation or oppression does not require Hong Kong to be the natural forum; bad faith or improper motives in instituting foreign proceedings suffice. Practitioners advising clients on cross-border enforcement should anticipate that Hong Kong courts will robustly protect their judgments from collateral attack through foreign proceedings.