City litigators have been ‘surprised’ that an expected wave of post-credit crunch disputes has not yet materialised, according to two groups monitoring financial services litigation and dispute resolution.

A private meeting last week of the Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC), chaired by Lord Hoffmann (pictured) and composed of influential City litigators and senior corporate counsel, and the City Disputes Panel (CDP), the alternative dispute resolution adviser, found that ‘lawyers are surprised that there has been no cascade of litigation so far [nor] a more active fall-out from the crisis.’

Neil Stocks, non-executive director of the CDP, said: ‘A lot of the City had been expecting litigation post-crisis of almost biblical proportions.’

Throughout the recession, market commentators have been predicting sharp increases in litigation and restructuring work for City firms.

However, the CDP and FMLC put the lack of litigation down to ‘a period of post-crisis stabilisation’ and predicted that ‘more litigation will inevitably come.’

Roger Best, partner in the litigation and dispute resolution practice at magic circle firm Clifford Chance, said that the extensive investigations being undertaken by corporates before commencing litigation, and some ‘jousting’ in the courts over jurisdiction, might explain why the expected flow of cases has not yet arrived. ‘I think we will see more litigation, but not on the scale you see in the States,’ he said.

But he warned that the appetite for litigation could diminish over time. ‘With many corporate clients, once the market picks up and they return to making money from doing new deals, then management tend to lose interest in picking apart the corpses of the past by looking for opportunities for litigation recoveries,’ he said.