Bank Guarantees in International Trade, Fourth Revised Edition 4 Revisedth Edition

good book,excellent service!

Great book. Extremely comprehensive. A must have for all lawyers and in-house counsels. Extremely important to have for all practicinors in the trade finance field.

Independent bank guarantees, also known as standby letters of credit, are an alter ego of conventional letters of credit. It is used in cases, when conventional letter of credit is not appropriate for certain reasons or when merchants believe bank guarantees are relevant.Despite the fact that many believe that letters of credit are different from bank guarantees, they are almost identical. Moreover, there is common feature between them, which is full independence from underlying transaction.The book under review is a result of scholarly work of Roeland Bertrams, professor at VU University Law School in Amsterdam. The author did a tremendous job by collecting absolutely all information about bank guarantees and comparing its application in common lawand continental law countries.The author applies not only doctrinal method of legal research, but also empirical. Thus, he gathered opinions of other specialists from different countries and conducted field study with the purpose of summarizing legal practice, which is valuable source of information.The chapters and sub-chapters are written in "intro - culmination - conclusion" fashion, which immediately affected the structure of sentences. In some cases, author writes in a very laconic and simple style, whereas in other instances, he uses long and sophisticated sentences. The language of text is actually sophisticated in certain instances, which can be explained with reference to the nature of bank guarantees, which are complicated financial instruments.The author also uses simple diagrams in order to explain certain concepts or doctrines, which makes them accessible to ordinary reader, but personally, for me, they were not always accessible.The most interesting chapter of the book is a chapter, where author explains how to write text of bank guarantee correctly with reference to common mistakes.One of the author's observations is remarkable in this context. Particularly, he notes that "when drafting in the English language, continental lawyers often use standard English text for guarantees, such as those issued in favor of UK banks or those in the LMA documentation, believing them to be independent first demand guarantees whereas these are in fact a traditional suretyship" (fn. 7, p. 91)The present remark is very important since it is common mistake of not only of European lawyers, but also of lawyers from post-Soviet countries. Besides, author differentiates between bank guarantee, conventional guarantee and suretyship.In most cases, lawyers commit same mistakes, confusing conventional guarantee with bank guarantee. The present book is written with purpose to prevent them from committing such mistakes in future.Moreover, even though the author refers to the bulk of sources from different jurisdictions, he notes that it is a comparative study. Particularly, he writes: "although this book covers case law and legal writing from a number of countries, it is not a comparative study, and no particular system of national law has been taken as a point of reference". Instead, the author inserts that phenomenon of independent guarantee has been point of reference.It is also remarkable that while the book is entitled "Bank guarantees in international trade", it separately discusses standby letters of credit. The author believes that standby credit is a U.S. version of bank guarantee, even though he realizes that there are certain differences.I strongly recommend this book to all bank lawyers, in-house lawyers and lawyers, involved in transnational deals. It is also particularly useful for academic lawyers, which are involved in comparative legal studies.