The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (“BIICL”), and DLA Piper, recently organized an event titled Revised ICSID Arbitration Rules: Key Changes. Following the initial presentation of Martina Polasek (ICSID Secretariat), Prof. Yarik Kryvoi (BIICL), Kate Cervantes-Knox, (DLA Piper), Guglielmo Verdirame KC (Twenty Essex) and Dr. Anthony Sinclair (Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan) shared…

Traditionally, nationality for corporate entities has been regulated by national law, often by reference to whether a corporation has a seat in a country or was incorporated under its laws. However, international investment law has departed from the generally accepted rules of international law on the nationality of corporate persons. Already in the 1960s, the…

As the number of investor-state disputes grows, so does the number of applications for provisional measures. The recent empirical study conducted by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and White&Case suggests that investors were more than twice as likely to obtain positive decisions on their requests than respondent states. The study also showed that…

States can regulate as part of their sovereignty and can give away a part of their regulatory freedom by making commitments to foreign investors, such as the obligation to compensate investors for expropriation. Unless a treaty removes or modifies a particular norm of international law, international law on expropriation, including customary law, should apply. The…

On 13 November 2018, ICSID will present its new proposed amendments at a major conference in London. This round of amendments aims, among other things, to modernize the ICSID procedure based on case experience, simplify the rules, and make the process increasingly time and cost effective while maintaining due process and a balance between investors…

Investor-state tribunals frequently face allegations of economic crimes, especially in jurisdictions with a weak rule of law. For instance, the largest ever investor–State award of $50 billion in Yukos v Russian Federation, primarily concerned a criminal investigation of alleged tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement by what was then the largest Russian oil company. The tribunal…

Over the last years, European arbitration institutions show the increasing number of arbitration cases involving Russian and other former Soviet Union countries, most of which are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Russian parties were second only to local Swedish companies appearing before the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC)….

In September 2015 the UNCITRAL Working Group II (Arbitration and Conciliation) continued its work on formulating legal framework on the enforcement of settlement agreements, including a convention, model provisions or guidance texts. Currently, parties can request arbitration tribunals to record their settlement agreements as consent awards, i.e. an arbitral award on terms agreed upon by…

King Solomon might have split the baby had he not realised the identity of its parent in time. Judges and arbitrators – some 3,000 years later – might be quicker to identify a company’s real group structure, but are they any better in splitting parent from child-subsidiary? A typical corporate veil piercing case involves a…