Historically, the trend towards the harmonisation of commercial laws has been concerned either with the creation of a regime dealing with international transactions while preserving the identity of national laws or alternatively the emergence of supranational entities where the focus has been upon progressing a common market or political or economic grouping. The legal instruments that have promoted harmonisation1 have mainly revolved around a model law such as the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (1985) or those instruments that deal with international commercial contracts and depend for their application on incorporation into contracts. Clearly there are limits on the effectiveness of international proposals for contractual incorporation. By definition, they are not mandatory and for them to have any realistic effect there must exist a considerable degree of homogeneity in commercial practice as seen, for example, with documentary letters of credit.2 In addition, contractual mechanisms have mainly an inter-partes dimension3 and are not therefore apt to deal with third party rights including the recognition and enforcement of international security interests.