The Hungarian Parliament has recently adopted a new Act on Arbitration, which will enter into force on 1 January 2018 (the Act). The new Act (based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration as amended in 2006 (the Model Law)) implements changes that are likely to have a considerable impact on the Hungarian…
Since the end of January 2017, a new law amending and supplementing the Code of Civil Procedure became effective (the “Law”). It also provides for amendments to the International Commercial Arbitration Act (“ICAA”) and to the Consumers Protection Act (“CPA”). Below is a summary of some of the key changes introduced by the Law. Consumer…
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,…
On 22 March 2017, with minimal fanfare, the Civil Law and Justice Amendment Legislation Bill 2017 (“2017 Bill”) was introduced into the upper house of the federal Parliament. Buried within this omnibus Bill were four proposed reforms to the International Arbitration Act (IAA), renamed as such in 1989 when Australia was one of the first…
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…
Russia has recently revised its arbitration laws. The key development of the reform is to address the arbitrability of so-called “corporate disputes.” The new laws lift the longstanding ban on arbitrating most types of controversies relating to a Russian company. There is a catch, though: the lawmakers set out mandatory procedural conditions with which any…
Judicature modernisation reforms, which passed through New Zealand’s Parliament in October, represent the most significant revamp of the country’s court system since the Judicature Act 1908. In addition to several changes to court structures and processes, the reforms made two modest amendments to New Zealand’s Arbitration Act 1996 (the Act). First, the definition of “arbitral…
The last decade has seen a concerted effort by the Indian legislature, the executive and the judiciary to promote alternative dispute resolution in India. The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 (‘Amending Act’) marks an important milestone in the development of arbitration law in India. Some of the important changes brought about by the Amending…
In recent years, international arbitration has emerged as a high-growth area for the litigation funding industry. All the major funders now have international arbitration cases in their portfolios, and many are aggressively seeking more – especially investment treaty cases. But the participation of funders in international arbitration raises a number of issues, some national and…
The cover of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy famously features a “Don’t Panic” button. In the weeks leading up to the Brexit vote, some English law firms posted reassuring articles on the possible effects a vote to leave would have for dispute resolution in London. “Don’t panic” seemed to be a common theme. Yet…
Introduction As noted this firm’s previous post on the Chaolaixinsheng case (see Cao Lijun & Lu Leilei, To Be or Not to Be? The Practical Implications of Choosing Foreign Arbitration for Domestic Contracts, 6 March 2015), the Supreme People’s Court of China (the SPC) expressly ruled that foreign arbitral awards made in relation to purely…
The Hungarian arbitration Act (Act LXXI of 1994 on arbitration, “the Act”) has barely “turned 22” and the pressure to replace it with new legislation has popped up. Considering the current, rapid reform of effective laws in Hungary – meaning that relatively new legislation which has been in force for only five to ten years…
According to the 2015 report of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, India accounts for 5.1% of the world electricity generation and is the third largest generator of electricity in the world. A McKinsey report estimates the need to increase the generation capacity to about 440 GW by 2017 with an expected investment of…
Since 2011, Myanmar has seen a renewed effort at reforming its political, social and economic landscape. As part of the reforms, on 15 July 2013, Myanmar formally acceded to the New York Convention 1958. Myanmar had however not enacted local legislation or revised its archaic Arbitration Act of 1944 to give effect to its international…
The Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Act”) makes it clear that an arbitration between an Indian and a foreign party can be governed by foreign law and can have a foreign seat. This is defined as ‘international commercial arbitration’ under the Act. However, whether two Indian parties can agree to a foreign seat for…
The Indian Government recently promulgated two ordinances (i.e., the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Ordinance (“Ordinance”) and the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance (“Arbitration Ordinance” – an analysis of the Arbitration Ordinance by the authors is available here), that will have a far-reaching impact on the practice of arbitration…
by Esmé Shirlow (Assistant Editor for Australia & New Zealand) Gabriele Ruscalla has recently observed that “transparency has become a fundamental principle in international adjudication”. The transparency paradigms governing different types of international adjudication are, however, far from uniform. Discussions of transparency in international arbitration typically begin, for example, from a distinction between commercial and investment treaty disputes. As Cristoffer Nyegaard Mollestad explains…
The approach of the Kingdom of Thailand to international arbitration has undergone significantly different phases over time. These phases have ranged from support to scepticism. Recent developments, however, may signal a bright future for international arbitration in the Kingdom of Thailand and possibly the end of the journey on a winding tollway. The Kingdom…
It is fair to say that arbitration is already a widespread dispute mechanism in Portugal, broadly used not only for commercial disputes but also for disputes in other areas such as, for example, consumer, administrative and tax disputes. As for intellectual property, the possibility of submitting disputes to arbitration has been a reality in Portugal…
The recently promulgated Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance 2015 (the “Ordinance”) marks a significant change in the arbitration landscape of India. Most significantly, the Ordinance (a statutory enactment in exercise of an extraordinary power granted to the President to act when the parliament is not in session) seeks to restrain judicial intervention in arbitration and…
In 2013 the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin announced in his annual message to the Council of the Federation: “I would like to attract your attention to one more problem – the mechanisms of commercial dispute resolution are still not as good as the global practice is, and it is necessary to raise…
When the English Arbitration Bill was being debated in early 1996, a controversial issue considered was whether to retain a right of appeal on a point of law. Contrary to a number of civil code jurisdictions, the right was retained under English law, albeit in limited form and with the option to “opt-out”. A key…
On 27 July 2015 the Bill amending to the Brazilian Arbitration Law will come into force, introducing significant changes in the arbitration legal framework, which, according to the stated purpose of the amendments, aim at improving the original Brazilian Arbitration Law, enacted in 1996. The amendments attempt to consolidate established practices as well as settling…
As a fitting tribute to the vision of the first dedicated arbitration education institution, the School of International Arbitration (SIA) marked its 30th anniversary with a two day conference looking back and looking forwards. Entitled “The Evolution and Future of International Arbitration: The Next 30 years”, it brought together over 200 graduates, academics and practitioners…
