EGYPT Trends and Developments Contributed by: Samer Badran, Abdelrahman Mahdy, Abd El-Rahman Taha and Nancy Ashour, Badran Law Firm
such disputes to arbitration outside Egypt is null and void. The ruling leaves little room for a foreign licensor to structure around Article 87 by seating arbitration in a jurisdiction perceived as more arbitration-friendly; where a contract insists on a foreign governing law and seat despite an Egyptian counterparty, Egyptian courts are likely to declare that provision void and to assert jurisdiction over the dispute themselves. The practical consequence is significant: an arbitral award rendered in breach of Article 87 is unlikely to be enforceable in Egypt, though it may still find enforce - ment in another jurisdiction depending on the facts of the case. More recently (February 2026), the Cairo Econom - ic Court issued an award (in favour of Badran Law Firm’s client) confirming that an arbitration clause is considered null and void if it is embedded in a fran - chise agreement that includes know-how transfer in Egypt, when the applicable law to the dispute is a non-Egyptian law. By treating a foreign-seated arbitration clause in a know-how transfer agreement as outright void, rather than merely subject to a public policy review at the enforcement stage, the Egyptian courts signalled that Article 87 operates as a mandatory public policy rule of Egyptian law, a rule from which parties’ agreement cannot derogate. For practitioners advising on such agreements, the implications are straightforward: • governing law clauses should specify Egyptian law without exception; • arbitration clauses should seat proceedings in Egypt; and • any temptation to draft around Article 87 through a foreign seat, however commercially attractive to a foreign party, should be resisted. 3. The Egyptian Center for Arbitration and Settlement of Non-Banking Financial Disputes Although Egypt’s arbitration landscape has tradition - ally been dominated by CRCICA, the region’s oldest and most established arbitration institution, the state has pursued a complementary strategy, ie, building specialised arbitral institutions tied to sector-specific
regulators that are tailored to handle disputes that demand technical expertise. ECAS is the clearest example of this approach. Established under Presidential Decree No. 335 of 2019 and operating within the Financial Regulatory Author - ity, ECAS was created to resolve disputes arising within Egypt’s non-banking financial markets, a sec - tor encompassing everything from shareholder and partnership disputes to increasingly complex financial instruments. Its statutes, along with its arbitration and mediation rules, were subsequently issued by Prime Ministerial Decree No. 2597 of 2020, giving ECAS a formal procedural framework distinct from CRCICA’s. Tailored for non-banking financial disputes, ECAS’s arbitration rules contain electronic arbitration rules and expedited track rules. These rules suggest that ECAS is positioned as a full-service institution active - ly adapting its procedures to the pace and scale of Egypt’s evolving securities and financial markets. This tension between regulatory design and market habits is not merely theoretical. For instance, Article 296 of the Executive Regulation of the Capital Mar - ket Law requires margin purchase contracts between brokerage companies and their clients to specify a dispute resolution mechanism, without mandating any particular institution. In principle, disputes arising from margin purchase and securities trading contracts fall squarely within ECAS’s specialised mandate. In practice, however, brokerage companies and their clients have continued to rely on Article 296’s open- ended requirement to select CRCICA’s rules instead, a choice likely driven by CRCICA’s decades-long insti - tutional reputation rather than any legal obstacle to using ECAS. ECAS’s evolution illustrates, in miniature, the pattern that runs through Egypt’s broader arbitration reform: regulatory bodies are not merely tolerating arbitration as an alternative to litigation but actively building it into the legal infrastructure of the sectors they over - see. As Egypt continues to court foreign investment and expand financial technology under Law No. 5 of 2022,
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