On 7-8 June 2019, the ninth (Romanian) National Conference on Commercial Law in Cluj-Napoca was organized by the Department for Company Law and Corporate Governance of the Law Faculty of the University Babeş-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), together with the Center for Commercial Law of the West University of Timişoara (Romania), supported by the Romanian National…

Prof. Dr. Jelena Perović, from the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and Dr. Nataša Hadžimanović, from Gabriel Arbitration (Zurich, Switzerland), launched the Round Table on Arbitration in 2018 as a forum to discuss controversial issues, share experiences and highlight new trends in arbitration. The 2nd Round Table on Arbitration took place in the magnificent rooms of…

Without any doubt, international commercial arbitration found its place in the system of international dispute settlement. Many natural and legal persons choose to solve their disputes via the means of arbitration and in most of the cases arbitration is international in many aspects: Parties are from different countries, arbitrators are of different nationalities, sitting in…

Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, a substantial number of investment claims, in particular expropriation claims, have been raised by Ukrainian nationals against the Russian Federation in relation to investments made in Crimea prior to the annexation. In this regard, a fundamental legal issue concerns the applicability of the Agreement…

The principle of res judicata is a universal principle recognized by the legal systems of all civilized nations. The res judicata principle should be applied by arbitral tribunals as the arbitral tribunals are alternative to the courts and when an award is enforced it becomes a part of the legal order of the country where…

In a marked departure from its usual closed-doors policy, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court”) recently held public deliberations in two separate appeal proceedings concerning foreign investment arbitrations. In both cases, a public deliberation by all five judges of the first civil chamber was necessitated due to the lack of unanimity among the…

On 11 January 2017, the Swiss Federal Council issued a draft bill to revise chapter 12 of the Swiss International Private Law Act (“SPILA”) on international arbitration (as well as, to a lesser extent, the Federal Tribunal Act and the Civil Procedure Code (“CPC”)), which was the subject of a previous publication on this blog….

In a decision dated 26 July 2018 and published on 29 August 2018, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court”) dismissed an appeal to set aside an arbitral award as it found that Swiss public policy was not violated by a sole arbitrator’s confirmation of a success fee owed to a Swiss law firm…

Over the last few years, third-party ownership of soccer players (“TPO”) has become controversial. TPO is a mechanism through which a soccer club assigns a player’s economic rights, including the right to benefit from transfer fees every time the player is transferred to another club, to third-party investors in return for a financial counterpart. Considering…

In a recent case, the Swiss Federal Tribunal (“SFT”) has once again been called to consider the question of independence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) vis-à-vis its funders and users. This note introduces the issue of funding and independence of CAS in the context of the SFT’s prior case law and discusses…

The concept of attorney-client privilege is a unique creation of common-law jurisdictions which has influenced all types of legal regimes over the world. Common-law regimes developed such a concept to curb the wide sphere of document production and discovery in litigation. As the name of the concept entails, it was created as a privilege for…

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court, in a rare appeal against an award in a bilateral investment treaty arbitration, confirmed its statutory restraint in reviewing arbitral awards pursuant to article 190 of the Private International Law Act (“PILA”) and rejected the host state’s request to set aside the award for violating substantive public policy. (Case 4A_157/2017,…

On December 12, 2017, the Supreme Court of Japan rendered its first decision on the setting aside of an arbitral award based on an arbitrator’s failure to disclose facts allegedly constituting a conflict of interest, reasoning that, in order for the award to be set aside on this ground, it is necessary that the arbitrator…

On 17 October 2017, the Swiss Federal Tribunal (Switzerland’s highest jurisdiction) rendered a decision (4A_53/2017) on the challenge of an award rendered in the context of an international arbitration where the arbitration clauses of the disputed contracts both contained a wording whereby the parties renounced challenging any possible future arbitral award. I. Relevant Facts In…

In the 2000s, mortgages in Swiss Franc (CHF) were very popular among consumers in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe for the acquisition of both private and commercial properties, as the CHF was a stable and reliable currency and offered lower interest rates than loans in Euro or in local currencies. When on 15 January 2015…

On 11 January 2017, the Swiss Federal Council proposed a revised version of the Swiss International Private Law Act (“SPILA”) relating to international arbitration (art. 176 et seq.) with a view to increasing the attractiveness of Switzerland as a place of arbitration while preserving the concise, liberal and flexible traits of the SPILA. More precisely,…

Switzerland is a global hub for commodity traders, and therefore also a significant jurisdiction for disputes arising in the commodities sector. A recent decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (Decision 5A_441/2015 of 4 February 2016 (ASA Bull. 2/2016)) addresses important issues relating to commodity sales contracts and Swiss enforcement proceedings. The case involved arbitral proceedings…

On 1 March 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR” or the “Court”) rendered a decision in the case of Tabbane v. Switzerland (application no. 41069/12). In that decision, which was published on 24 March 2016, the Court, for the first time, examined the compatibility of a waiver of recourse against an arbitral award…

and Katherine Bell, Schellenberg Wittmer In decision 4A_554/2014 dated 15 April 2015, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court considered an application to set aside an award on the ground of violation of the right to be heard where the sole arbitrator had based her award on a legal concept that had not been explicitly pleaded by…

and Katherine Bell, Schellenberg Wittmer In 2014, the Swiss Supreme Court rendered 32 decisions on petitions to set aside international arbitral awards. Consistent with a traditionally low success rate, the Supreme Court granted only 4 of the 32 petitions. One of these four petitions was considered in a French-language decision dated 7 April 2014 (Decision…

By Matthias Scherer and Sam Moss, LALIVE In a judgment dated 7 July 2014, which was made public on 20 August 2014 (case no. 4A_124/2014), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court”) addressed the enforceability of a precondition for arbitration in a multi-tier dispute resolution provision, namely the requirement to submit a dispute to…

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and should not be regarded as representative of, or binding upon ArbitralWomen and/or the authors’ respective law firms. While the press has been full lately of a reported backlash against investment arbitration, Switzerland has been making quiet progress in its efforts to update…

Co-authored by Georg von Segesser, Benjamin Moss and Aileen Truttmann, Schellenberg Wittmer An arbitral tribunal’s relationship to state courts remains a complex and often contested topic. A particularly interesting question in this regard is whether a party to arbitral proceedings should be able to seek recovery of damages it was ordered to pay in state…

This post suggests revisiting the issue of whether bankruptcy of a foreign company party to arbitration proceedings pending in Switzerland can prevent the arbitration from moving forward and questions whether a specific provision should be introduced in Swiss legislation to specifically address the issue. The State of Play As it stands, the issue is not…