On November 4, 2015, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Convention published  a decision it had taken earlier this year, which found in favor of a Dan Cake, a Portuguese company that had brought a claim under a Hungary – Portugal bilateral investment treaty (BIT) (not available in English), alleging that the Hungarian court’s actions during the liquidation proceedings of a subsidiary were a violation of the fair and equitable treatment provision of the BIT. When Dan Cake’s Hungarian subsidiary encountered financial difficulties, several of its creditors initiated bankruptcy proceedings. Under Hungarian law, this triggers a 120-day period in which the liquidator arranges for a sale of the assets, unless the creditors agree to postpone the sale. Dan Cake’s subsidiary exercised its right to ask for a composition hearing in order to come to an agreement with its creditors. The Hungarian Court denied this request, ordered the subsidiary to produce several additional filings, and ordered the liquidator to proceed with the sale.  The tribunal found the court’s decision “was rendered in flagrant violation of the Bankruptcy Act and . . . purported to condition the mandatory convening of the hearing upon several requirements, all of which were unnecessary.” It further noted that “one thing is certain: whatever the chance of a successful composition hearing, it was destroyed by the Bankruptcy Court’s decision to refuse to convene a hearing within 60 days, as required by the law.” Thus, the tribunal concluded “the Court simply did not want, for whatever reason, to do what was mandatory.” It noted the International Court of Justice’s definition of denial of justice as “a wilful disregard of due process of law, an act which shocks, or at least surprises, a sense of juridical propriety” as well as several previous tribunals’ definitions such as “administer[ing] justice in a seriously inadequate way,” “clearly improper and discreditable,” and “[m]anifest injustice in the sense of a lack of due process leading to an outcome which offends a sense of judicial propriety . . . .” The tribunal concluded that “[t]he violation of the obligation to treat the investor in a fair and equitable manner took the form of a denial of justice.”