The Qatar Financial Center Civil and Commercial Court (“QFC Court”) is considered a Qatari on-shore Court established in 2009 and modelled on leading international corporate courts. Under the new Qatari Arbitration Law (“Law n. 2 of 2017”), the QFC Court has a very decisive role to play. By Agreement of the Parties, the QFC Court…
Recent developments in the international investment scene have also impacted the Asian region. Notably, China and Southeast Asia have emerged not just as growing foreign direct investment (FDI) recipients but also as major sources of outbound FDI. In parallel, the Asian region experienced a proliferation in international investment agreements (IIAs). Asian countries were initially hesitant…
A year ago, on 25 February 2016, it was reported that Poland intends to terminate its Bilateral Investment Treaties (“BITs”; see initial comments here). Earlier this year, by a resolution of 5 January 2017, an interministerial Working Group on Polish investment policy was officially established to, among other things, review and analyse existing BITs (as…
As of 1 February 2017 shareholders in a Russian company may refer their corporate law disputes to arbitration. Still, except for disputes from share purchase agreements or those involving securities registrars, having an arbitration clause in a company charter, a shareholders’ agreement (“SHA“), or elsewhere which submits corporate disputes to arbitration is not enough. A…
A conference titled ‘International Financial Services and Small States’ was held at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s London office on 30-31 January 2017, jointly organised by the firm’s International Arbitration Practice Group and the Centre for Small States, Queen Mary University of London. The conference followed on from the ‘Integration and International Dispute Resolution…
As Hong Kong enters the year of the Rooster, its arbitration community can look back on a year of the Monkey in which the territory’s institutions and authorities implemented a number of initiatives aimed to promote arbitration, and its courts rendered several pro-arbitration decisions. Third party funding for arbitration in Hong Kong In November 2016,…
Earlier this year, the Dubai-DIFC Judicial Committee established by the Ruler of Dubai by virtue of Decree No. (19) of 2016 (also know as the “Judicial Tribunal” or the “Joint Judicial Committee”) rendered its first decision (see Cassation No. 1/2016 (JT) – Daman Real Capital Partners Company LLC v. Oger Dubai LLC, hearing of 19…
On 1 January 2017, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (‘ACICA’) released a new Guideline on the Use of Tribunal Secretaries. This new Guideline addresses a silence in the existing ACICA Arbitration Rules as to the scope for tribunals to appoint arbitral secretaries, and the basis upon which they might be appointed. This post…
The Arbitrator Intelligence Questionnaire (AIQ) is a feedback questionnaire that will be used by Arbitrator Intelligence (AI) to collect information on case management and decision making practices of international arbitrators. After pilot testing and extensively vetting the AIQ, we are now asking for public comments to help us further refine it. A demonstration version of…
The terms ‘Privacy’ and ‘Confidentiality’ had been used in arbitration interchangeably until the latter half of 20th century. While ‘Privacy’ means that no third party can attend arbitral conferences and hearings, ‘Confidentiality’ refers to non-disclosure of specific information in public. Private hearings do not necessarily attach confidentiality obligations to the parties to arbitration. The general…
The first blog in this two-part series, published last year, discussed the growing concern of arbitration users over “due process paranoia”. In that first blog, due process paranoia was defined as the perceived reluctance by arbitral tribunals to act decisively (for example by rejecting applications for extensions of time, refusing amendments to submissions, rejecting new…
Article 19 of the Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships and Foreign Investment Act (“PPP Act”) recognizes local and international arbitration as one of the dispute resolution methods that has arisen in Public-Private Partnership agreements (“PPP agreements”). Article 20 of this Act and articles 19, 20, 21, and 22 of its Regulations set forth certain rules for…
2016 was an important year for international arbitration. Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales challenged the legitimacy of international arbitration, while supporters such as former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (Robert French AC) came forward to defend its coexistence with commercial courts. Several institutions such as ACICA, SIAC and KCAB updated…
New years are a great opportunity to take stock and to prepare for future developments, despite the obvious difficulties in predicting what the main trends will be. This is also the case for 2017. Looking back to 2016 there are two topics that immediately stand out: gender diversity and transparency. Both topics were subject to…
Appellate arbitration clauses provide for an appellate mechanism against an award rendered between the concerned parties by subjecting the dispute through another arbitration to eliminate all potential errors and obtain correction of the same. Not all arbitration disputes are suitable for an appellate review. But in cases where parties place higher importance on the correctness…
Arbitration is an increasingly popular form of dispute resolution in the field of construction, particularly for international projects where parties are of different nationalities, and where at least one party is unlikely to be operating on home soil. However, a commonly cited disadvantage of arbitration as opposed to court litigation is that there may not…
From mediation competitions in Panjim, India and Paris, a proposed mediation law in Lithuania and an exploration of how Game Theory might help us better analyse the role of mediator, the month of January saw the usual breadth of topics on the Kluwer Mediation Blog. Perhaps one of the following posts may take your fancy:…
Arbitration has become a preferred method for the resolution of international commercial disputes in Russia, mostly thanks to the activities of the Moscow-based International Commercial Arbitration Court (“ICAC“, the Russian acronym “MKAS“) at the RF Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Established in 1932 as the Foreign Trade Arbitration Commission placed under the USSR National Chamber…
In Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co, the US Supreme Court stated that “[a] contractual provision specifying in advance the forum in which disputes shall be litigated and the law to be applied is an almost indispensable precondition to achievement of the orderliness and predictability essential to any international business transaction.” While this statement holds almost invariably…
On December 21, 2016, the Tribunal in Hochtief v Argentina issued an award on damages against Argentina in an arbitration brought under the Argentina-Germany BIT. The Claimant had alleged multiple treaty breaches by Argentina, arising out of the 2000 economic crisis, and originally sought US$ 54 million in damages. Although the Tribunal found that Argentina…
Nearly one hundred climate scientists, economists, policy specialists, investors, and lawyers recently convened in Stockholm for the conference “Bridging the Climate Change Policy Gap: The Role of International Law and Arbitration” organized jointly by the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (“the SCC”), the International Bar Association, the International Chamber of Commerce and…
Diversity in arbitral tribunals has already received a considerable amount of attention at this blog, especially in regards to gender diversity (post are available here, here, and here). The discussion is, of course, still ongoing and far from reaching the desired goals. On 10 January 2017, Berwin Leighton Paisner released an annual arbitration survey titled…
Background Bulgarian arbitration law has been an area of rare developments. It is incorporated in the International Commercial Arbitration Act (“ICAA”), adopted in 1988 as almost a direct translation of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration in its 1985 version. The only major reform of ICAA was its extension to arbitrations between entirely…
The selection of an interest rate to apply to an arbitral damages award can be an important determinant of the total award. For example, prejudgment interest added 26% to damages across 63 ICSID awards since 2000. Consistent with this notion, many international investment treaties specify claimants be compensated at a reasonable or normal “commercial rate.”…
