In the summer of 2009, an ICSID tribunal ruled that various orders of the Bangladeshi courts that cumulatively denied Saipem (an Italian company) the benefits of an ICC award made in its favour constituted an unlawful expropriation of its investment. It held that the investor was entitled to compensation based upon the value of the…
Videocon Industries Ltd. Vs. Union Of India & Anr. (on 11 May, 2011) The Supreme Court of India (the SCI) recently added to the contentious line of authority beginning with its ruling in Bhatia International v Bulk Trading SA (2002) (4) SCC 105 concerning the power of the Indian courts to intervene in arbitrations held…
The scope of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses in bilateral investment treaties (BITs) has been a source of rich debate for many years. In sum, the debate centres around whether MFN “treatment” includes only substantive rules for the protection of investments, or if it also extends to procedural protections such as dispute resolution. There have…
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales ruled last month that where parties have entered into an arbitration agreement, one party can obtain an anti-suit injunction to prevent the other party from initiating proceedings in a foreign court, even where no arbitration is underway or indeed even contemplated. In AES Ust-Kamenogorsk Hydropower Plant LLP…
CIETAC’s Vice Chairman and Secretary General recently announced at a conference in London that CIETAC may soon permit parties to select arbitrators from outside the CIETAC list. As the CIETAC Rules currently allow parties to appoint off-list only if they have agreed to do so, this announcement suggests that CIETAC may in the future allow…
The new Hong Kong Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609) (the “Ordinance”) comes into effect today, having been approved by the Hong Kong Legislative Council at the end of last year. The Ordinance represents the culmination of many years of discussion and consultation and marks a significant milestone in the development of Hong Kong as a world-class…
In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons explore a classic experiment that won them an Ig Nobel Prize (2004). Their research considers how our own perceptions and memories can fool us into thinking something is true (when it is false) or lead us to miss things that are far more profound. This research…
Such a makeover will certainly not be achieved in sixty minutes. Sixty days will not nearly be enough. One would not, however, have to be too audacious to hope that India can reinvent itself as an arbitration-friendly part of the world in sixty months. From its early years as a newly independent, fledgling democracy, India…
The recent decision of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division (an intermediate state appellate court) in Sojitz Corp. v. Prithvi Information Solutions Ltd., 2011 N.Y. Slip Op. 1741; 2011 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1709, bolsters New York’s reputation as a jurisdiction friendly to international arbitration. In this case, which involved two non-U.S. parties in…
On 11 March 2011, the UNASUR treaty entered into force. UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) is a regional organisation that comprises all twelve South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. The entry into force of the treaty is an important development for the international arbitration community given some of the proposals that UNASUR is advancing, particularly in the field of investor-State arbitration.
Dear Counsel, Thank you for taking the time to present your firm’s international arbitration practice, and also for the copies of the brochure and monthly newsletter. The many recent wins by your firm and the published articles demonstrate convincingly that you are quality professionals with a high-standing in the community. I’m certain it was not…
The Arab Spring transforming the societies of the Middle East has raised more than a few questions among us in-house folk about what this will mean for dispute resolution in the region. Will civil institutions, in particular the courts, be a reliable mechanism in the coming years for upholding contractual rights, including agreements to arbitrate…
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…
During the last quarter of 2010 the German Arbitration Institution (‘DIS’) and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (‘CIAarb’) held a conference in Frankfurt to debate the relative merits of the ways in which civil law/common law court procedures are adopted or adapted for use in international arbitrations. One of the more interesting sessions was devoted…
I received this notice from my friend Gary Born and thought it worth sharing. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for any academic interested in international arbitration. My Pepperdine colleague Tom Stipanowich was the resident scholar last semester, and he could not say enough about the experience. Here’s the formal announcement: The International Arbitration Group at…
Last year, around this time, I offered a list of 10 investor-state arbitral awards I hoped to see in 2010. If time permits, I may do another list for 2011. But, first I thought I’d take a look back at last year’s list and offer a brief update on those cases. Rather, than do all…
Another arbitral center may be opening its doors soon, but this one intends to be global and to focus exclusively on complex financial disputes, including the over-the-counter derivatives market. The World Legal Forum, a non-profit organization located in The Netherlands worked with varying other groups to create this idea. On October 25, 2010, at the…
“The jury system is a grand institution; so was the tower of Babel – all the difference is, that God took a hand in the one, and the devil occasionally takes a hand in the other.” This is Valmaer’s view on the selection of juries for court litigation in Section 3 of his “Lawyer’s code…
“To the rest of the world, the English legal profession is a very strange species indeed” (Berlins and Dyer, The Law Machine) As autumn, season of mists, beckons there is, in London at least, a sense of the legal profession going ‘back to school’. During the summer, many firms will, like my own, have run…
The beauty of the World Cup, and especially this game, is that it’s a marvelous opportunity to demonstrate one small piece of lingering English superiority. This “showdown” between England … is in fact a made-for-history moment to score one back for the old country. It’s the one darned thing they know they can beat America…
I spent some time earlier this month covering the Chevron-Ecuador hearings that took place in the Federal District Court in New York City. Much has been written about the outcome of those proceedings – and the denial of a request by Ecuador for an injunction against a bilateral investment treaty arbitration started some months ago…
In international arbitration proceedings in Continental Europe, particularly in Germany but also in Switzerland and other countries, it has become increasingly popular for arbitral tribunals to get involved and even take active steps in facilitating a settlement between the parties during the course of a pending arbitration. This raises a number of issues, and parties…
