We are delighted to present the first issue of the ninth volume of the European Investment Law and Arbitration Review (EILA Rev). Regular readers will notice four significant changes: First, there is a new cover; second, there is a new publisher – we are delighted to work with Kluwer on this and the fact that…
The past year has seen a variety of exogenous impacts to global energy markets: from the sanctions flowing from Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, to the supply chain aftershocks of the COVID Pandemic, to hiccups in the commercial and government policy implementations of the global Energy Transition. International arbitration too has seen its share…
Denial of benefits clauses (DoB) have gained considerable traction in the past prolific years of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), and more specifically, with the growing number of Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) arbitrations. UNCTAD’s Investment Policy Hub still lists a considerably small number of international investment agreements (IIAs) providing for DoB: little above 200 which would…
Last week QMUL, in partnership with the Corporate Counsel International Arbitration Group (“CCIAG”), launched its first ever survey focusing exclusively on international investment. This is the tenth major empirical International Arbitration survey conducted by the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London. A link to the survey can be found here. The…
Anecdotally, the time and cost of arbitrating international construction disputes is one of the biggest sources of dissatisfaction. This was reflected in the discussion on the final day of London International Disputes Week at the international construction disputes panels. This is unsurprising as previous Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) surveys identified cost and lack…
The following thoughts are written aware of the fact that a blog is personal and informational and not a substitute for an academic article. In this spirit the thoughts expressed here are, while fundamental in many respects, also preliminary and tentative in some others. The quest for more transparency in international (commercial and investment) arbitration…
There has been a historical antipathy of banks towards arbitration. Banks (and other financial institutions) had no incentive or particular advantage to utilize private and quicker dispute resolution methods, such as mediation and arbitration. Well-run banks will normally be in possession of collateral security before money is made available to lenders or other customers and…
Numbers often speak better than words: international arbitration is nowadays a well-established mechanism for the settlement of commercial disputes; according to published institutional statistics the number of cases in 2009 is three times the number of cases in 1992. According to the 2010 Survey (www.arbitrationonline.org) of the School of International Arbitration sponsored by White and…
One can observe two rather opposing trends. On the one hand there is a steady (and more recently significant) increase in the number of arbitration cases; one the other hand there is a rather systematic criticism expressed by certain voices, predominately in the corporate world.Most well established institutions have recorded a 10% increase in their…
