Principal place of business

King v Crown Energy Trading AG and another (QBD TLR 14 March)

Article 60 of Council Regulation 44/2001/EC (OJ 2001 No L 12/1) provides:‘(1) For the purposes of this regulation, a company … is domiciled at the place where it has its: … (b) central administration; or (c) principal place of business ‘. The ‘principal’ place of business of a corporation means, in the context of article 60 as well as generally, ‘chief’, ‘most important’. The principal place of business was not necessarily the place where most business was carried out. In the present case, a simple listing of those with important responsibilities in the defendant’s business was enough to show that the central administration and principal place of business were to be found in London, even though the head of the chief income producers was based in Zug, Switzerland. Accordingly, despite the fact that the main income of the defendants might well have derived from the traders in Zug, their principal place of business was in London and proceedings had been properly served there. It was the place at the heart of the defendants’ operations.