The aftermath of the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy saw more than 20,000 retail investors in Hong Kong suffer losses from investments in structured products. This gave rise to political pressure on the Hong Kong Government to review its financial regulatory system and to step up its investor protection mechanisms. As one of the key outcomes of…
The 1981 French Arbitration Law did not contain a provision covering the form or the proof of an international arbitration agreement. The former Article 1499 of the Code of Civil Procedure (“CCP”) indirectly addressed the issue of form by stipulating, in the context of the recognition and enforcement of awards, that the existence of an…
Introduction: Many international commercial contracts (such as e.g., construction, distribution, sale and purchase) are governed by Swiss (substantive) law as per a choice of law provision. Often the choice of law is made in combination with an arbitration clause referring disputes to arbitration in Switzerland. The effect of international sanctions on commercial contracts has become…
Anyone considering Canada as the seat of an arbitration or as one among several jurisdictions where recognition and enforcement proceedings could be commenced should pay close attention to the Supreme Court of Canada’s March 18 decision in Seidel v. TELUS Communications Inc., 2011 SCC 15, which appears to mark a philosophical shift in Canadian arbitration…
Clear tendencies towards an arbitration-friendly approach have been demonstrated by the Swedish Supreme Court during the latter part of 2010. During this term the Supreme Court has repeatedly taken an arbitration-friendly stance and emphasized that Swedish arbitration law and practice ought to be in line with international best practice in arbitration. Sweden has a long-standing…
The new French arbitration law, published on 14 January 2011, further reinforces Paris’ position as a leading arbitration centre. The new law, which comes thirty years after the previous 1980 law regarding domestic arbitration and the 1981 law dealing with international arbitration, maintains the distinction between domestic and international arbitration. It clarifies and enhances an…
The goal had seemed an impossible one for many years. And then, recently, a tribunal in Berlin came close to breaking the famed barrier. Their noble effort was thwarted only by the Teutonic lapse of the chair who, on the verge of declaring the proceedings closed at 4 minutes and 43 seconds, spontaneously suggested terms…
According to a well-placed contact at a major arbitral institute, a significant proportion of new arbitration matters involve post-acquisition disputes; in particular, claims brought against vendors of businesses who are accused of having misrepresented, sometimes fraudulently, an acquired business’s true financial position. Many of these claims relate to transactions carried out at the peak of…
Here in the southern hemisphere, more precisely at Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 5th Annual Congress on Arbitration took place on the afternoon of Tuesday 12 and morning of Wednesday 13, October, co-organized by two institutions: CARAT and the Arbitral Tribunal of the Stock Market of Buenos Aires. Present at the event were a number of…
Switzerland may be one of the world’s most important arbitral seats, even so one would scarcely expect arbitration to hold much interest for the tubercular residents of Davos in Mann’s novel Der Zauberberg or The Magic Mountain. Yet aficionados of arbitration who persevere to the sixth chapter of his lengthy book are treated to a…
My former Pepperdine colleague, Kathryn Lee Boyd, has just filed a fascinating complaint relating to the distribution of funds secured by a treaty between the United States and Libya on behalf of U.S. victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism.
Agency as a mechanism for compelling a non-signatory to join arbitral proceedings By Hanna Roos for YIAG International investors, and those who advise them, continue to be vexed by the question of when a non-signatory, such as a sovereign state, can be compelled to join arbitral proceedings. A typical scenario involves a private investor who…
