The current state of affairs of arbitration within Latin America looks challenging. Many countries are having upcoming ICSID awards which could amount to tens of billions of dollars against them. Most international bonds have a final judgment event of default (EoD), which could lead to a default bond scenario on the sovereign debt of such…
and Paul Tan, Jawad Ahmad and Victor Steinmetz, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP In what marks the first time where a Singapore court reviews an investment arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction, the High Court held in Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic v Sanum Investments Ltd [2015] SGHC 15 that, contrary to the tribunal’s findings, the…
and Mitchell Moranis, WilmerHale As discussed recently in this forum, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is the prevailing mechanism for the interpretation of investment treaties (Interpreting Investment Treaties, Roberto Castro de Figueiredo, 21 Oct. 2014). The Vienna Convention, however, was adopted in May 1969. According to the ICSID Database of Bilateral Investment…
The HKIAC has recently updated its 2005 Procedures for the Administration of Arbitration under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules (the 2005 Procedures). This is one of several measures the HKIAC has taken in recent years to refine and improve its arbitration offerings. The new procedures incorporate both innovations in HKIAC practice and recent revisions to the…
One of the fundamental issues of investment cases – apparently more frivolous than the strictly legal battles – takes the form of debates over the applicable compensation standard. Historically speaking, the problem was mainly put forth for breaches of Bilateral Investment Treaties that referred to expropriatory behaviors of signatory states. Therefore, if this specific type…
By virtue of a recent Decree (see Decree No. (47) of 2014 Reshuffling the Board of Trustees of the Dubai International Arbitration Center, issued in Dubai on 7 December 2014), HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, has appointed Dr. Habib Al Mulla, founder of former Habib Al Mulla & Co,…
The IBA recently revised its Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration. This was the culmination of a review by the IBA Arbitration Committee, which began in 2012. The salient changes address the rise of advance declarations by arbitrators; third-party funding; increasing significance of arbitral secretaries; and the possibility that an arbitrator, and counsel…
The Inaugural Conference of the European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA) took place on Friday, 23 January 2015, in the Senate House of the Queen Mary University of London. 160 participants ranging from academics, arbitrators, arbitration institutions, companies, lawyers to NGOs reviewed a full day long the EU’s first 5 years of European…
Although a bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”) arbitration and an application made before the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) could, at first glance, present opposite objectives, investors alleging a violation of their rights by a State may be inclined to make use of both remedies. As it will be elaborated below, the case law…
The controversial role of non-disputing parties has been the object of a significant amount of literature. While third party funding was a hot topic hitherto, the so-called amicus curia, and its evolving role, might be back in the spotlight. Since the first ICSID amicus case -the Bechtel case- until today, the rights, interests at stake…
In article 35 of the Brazilian Arbitration Law (“BAA”) it states that, in order to be enforced in Brazil, a foreign arbitral award (i.e., an award issued outside Brazil’s territory) must be recognized by the judiciary. This judicial recognition rests with the Superior Tribunal of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça – “STJ”), which retains exclusive…
That was the assessment of Constantine Partasides QC, founding partner of Three Crowns, during his keynote address to the joint ITA-IEL conference. According to Mr. Partasides, there is a developing consensus among states that it is acceptable, and even virtuous, to challenge investor-state arbitration as an infringement on the rights of the public to pass…
and David Mamane and Hannah Boehm, Schellenberg Wittmer With its interim judgment of 15 January 2015, the Higher Regional Court of Munich added a new chapter to the longstanding legal dispute between the German speed skater Claudia Pechstein and the International Skating Union (“ISU”) (see the previous report on this story). The full decision has…
and Alex Wiker, Dickinson School of Law On January 14, the Pilot Project for Arbitrator Intelligence—whose launch was first announced here on the Kluwer Blog—came to an official close. We could not be more pleased with the Pilot results, which we will share with readers below. But first, a bit of background about the methodology…
The split between CIETAC headquarters in Beijing and its two former Shanghai and Shenzhen sub-commissions following the adoption of CIETAC’s 2012 Arbitration Rules has remained in the spotlight. The feud escalated with the assertion of independence by the two sub-commissions and the revocation by headquarters of their authorisation to administer cases. To add to the…
co-authored by Georg von Segesser and Mirina Grosz, Schellenberg Wittmer Ltd. In a recent decision, the Swiss Federal Tribunal rejected an appeal to set aside a final award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) (Decision of the Swiss Federal Tribunal (“DFT”) of 11 June 2014, 4A_178/2014). The appellant, a professional cyclist who faced…
This article is published as a result of the cooperation agreement between Kluwer Arbitration Blog and ArbitralWomen. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and should not be regarded as representative of, or binding upon ArbitralWomen and/or the author’s law firm. In 2010 Australia amended its International Arbitration Act (Cth) 1974 (IAA)…
In the recent case of Pricol v. Johnson Controls (Pricol Limited v. Johnson Controls Enterprises Ltd and Ors, Arbitration Case (Civil) No.30 of 2014), the Supreme Court of India declined to intervene in an international arbitration with the SIAC as appointing authority, upholding the parties’ chosen mechanism in a well-reasoned decision which was marked by…
At the opening of the legal year in Singapore on 5 January 2015, the Singapore International Commercial Court (“SICC“) was officially launched. In the words of Chief Justice Menon, the SICC is intended to “build upon and complement the success of [Singapore’s] vibrant arbitration sector and make [Singapore’s] judicial institutions and legal profession available to…
The success of international commercial arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution much depends on the extent to which parties may vindicate their rights through the enforcement of any arbitral award. For this reason, to date – consistent with the pro-arbitration approach adopted by courts in many jurisdictions – English commercial court judges have…
In its decision of 17.2.2014, the Austrian Supreme Court decided on a claimant’s request for reimbursement of the portion of the fees advanced to the arbitrator whom it had successfully challenged during ongoing proceedings and on his liability for frustrated costs caused by the challenge and the appointment of a new arbitrator. Further, the claimant…
Singapore’s longstanding reputation as an arbitration friendly jurisdiction was reinforced in 2010 with the legislature’s adoption of the 2006 amendments to the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. The 2006 UNCITRAL amendments concerned, among other matters, the use of interim awards in international arbitration, and recognised “the need for provisions in the Model Law…
India lost its first Investment Treaty Arbitration (ITA) claim in 2012 against White Industries, an Australian company. Taking a cue from the White Industries case, (read more on it here) around 17 fresh ITAs have been filed against India in last two years. Beleaguered with these claims, a new model BIT is being considered by…
Perhaps on a daily basis, in at least one city somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, an international-arbitration practitioner is asked to describe the benefits of arbitration over litigation in Latin America. The common refrain: “Predictability.” As conventional wisdom goes, this almost automatic response is borne out of the notion that litigating in many Latin American…
