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Swiss Courts dismiss foreign currency claims if the currency of the prayers for relief is wrongly denominated

9 October 2018 By Nicolas Ollivier, Grégoire Geissbühler

Swiss law is often chosen by foreign parties to govern their contractual agreements, mostly due to Switzerland’s stability and neutrality, its well-established case law and its highly liberal legal system which allows parties to shape contracts with little restriction. Nowadays, companies can easily open sub-accounts in different currencies to do business and convert currencies to make payments. Furthermore, anyone can readily access historical exchange rates which are available online and thus determine the value of any amount in different currencies. This could suggest that little or no attention is paid to the currency in which a monetary claim is denominated when a dispute arises.

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