Banque Cantonale de Geneve, the Swiss bank, has dropped a lawsuit for alleged negligence against law firm Allen & Gledhill, after a settlement was reached in Singapore’s High Court this week.

Banque Cantonale de Geneve, the Swiss bank, has dropped a lawsuit for alleged negligence against law firm Allen & Gledhill, after a settlement was reached in Singapore’s High Court this week.

This publication is in contact with the bank but had not received a response at the time of going to press. The law firm, meanwhile, confirmed that the lawsuit had been dropped against it by the bank.

The trial was heard in part last year and was due to resume this week; Allen & Gledhill stated that the bank withdrew its claim for damages without the law firm making any payment or admission of liability.

The issue began in 2005, when Banque Cantonale de Geneve provided financing for a company called Rustal to buy and ship a cargo of rice on the Far Eastern Shipping vessel Chelyabinsk. The cargo was to be discharged in Lome City in Togo, West Africa, but a dispute arose between the ship owner and the bank, which wanted the cargo discharged in Douala, Cameroon.

In February 2006, Banque Cantonale de Geneve detained the Chelyabinsk in Lome. A few days later, Far Eastern Shipping obtained a Lome court order to have the ship released. In March 2006, the bank instructed Allen & Gledhill to sue Far Eastern Shipping and arrest a sister ship of the Chelyabinsk in Singapore,the Vasiliy Golovnin.

The bank had claimed that Allen & Gledhill gave professionally negligent advice in relation to the ship's arrest. The case went to the High Court and the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the bank had unreasonably persisted in arresting the sister ship here even after its claims were settled in Lome.