Key legal question
Whether Swiss law governed a direct claim by the transferor against the recipient bank in a multistage bank transfer
Extracted holding
No. The Court held that the claimant's direct claim, if any, was accessory to the contract with the first bank and was therefore governed by Australian law.
Extracted reasoning
The Court held that the relevant contractual relationship for choice-of-law purposes is the one between the transferor and its first bank. In international transfers, the direct claim against the recipient bank does not arise from an autonomous contract with that bank and depends on the law governing the main mandate relationship.