Commercial Court grants worldwide freezing order against VietJet in FWA litigation

16/10/26

The Commercial Court (Saini J) has granted a post-judgment worldwide freezing order against the assets of VietJet Aviation JSC (“VietJet”), a publicly-listed Vietnamese airline, on the application of FW Aviation (Holdings) 1 Limited (“FWA”). VietJet owes FWA c.US$250 million under a series of judgments of the English courts.

In finding a risk of dissipation, the judgment focusses on the “PDP Participation Agreements”, by which VietJet transferred essentially all the value of its Order Book (of future aircraft) as at December 2024 to AHL [51]. The Judge described the receivables due from AHL in consideration for that transfer as “wholly illusory” [52]. The Judge considered earlier evidence from VietJet in response to the Court’s disclosure orders as “questionable” [60] in light of these transfers.

The judgment also contains at [83] an important discussion of when it will be just and convenient to grant a freezing order in the post-judgment context. The Judge also considered and rejected an application [24] to adjourn the hearing of the WFO application in light of Butcher J’s pending decision as to whether to appoint receivers over certain of VietJet’s assets (see here).