This post gives a bird’s eye view of an imminent investment arbitration and forecasts procedural and/or jurisdictional hurdles to the case, by analyzing the dispute resolution provision and relevant precedents, with the intention of highlighting recurring inconsistencies on a key procedural issue and urging for more predictable outcomes for the benefits of the stakeholders in…
Principles of adverse inferences are applied universally. International law endorses the arbitrator’s inherent authority to draw adverse inferences against a party for unjustified non-compliance with an order to produce information. Moreover, arbitrators can rely on general principles of law when applying adverse inferences as a basis for decisions. The general principle of good faith imposes…
On the second day of the ICCA Sydney 2018 Congress, two separate panels considered ‘Arbitrations Involving Public Bodies and Public Interest Salient Issues’. The first panel, moderated by Professor Stavros Brekoulakis (Queen Mary University of London) focused on ‘the Increasing Participation of Public Entities in International Arbitration.’ The panel comprised of Marie Talašová (Government of…
The morning session of the last day of the ICCA Sydney 2018 Conference on “Potential of Arbitration Involving New Stakeholders” was moderated by Ndanga Kamau and had the insightful contributions of Dr. Campbell McLachlan QC, Prof. Makane Moïse Mbengue and Silvia Marchili. Ndanga Kamau opened the final plenary session by asking the following question: why…
The afternoon session of the second day of the ICCA Sydney 2018 Conference on “New Voices” was moderated by Monty Taylor and had the insightful contributions of Jawad Ahmad, Lucas Bastin, Samantha Lord Hill and Solomon Ebere. Monty Taylor opened the session by noting that not only was this a new initiative for ICCA, but…
The panel on Arbitration Challenged Part I: Reforming Substantive Obligations in Investment Treaties and Conditions of Access to Investment Arbitration, at ICCA Sydney 2018 Conference, was moderated by Meg Kinnear, Secretary General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Canada) and had contributions from speakers Christophe Bondy, Cooley LLP (Canada); Max Bonnell, White…
In the midst of challenges to the very legitimacy of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) celebrated its 50th anniversary and embarked on the fourth ICSID Rules amendment process in ICSID history. The previous amendment processes brought notable additions to the ICSID Rules, such as enhanced transparency in…
Introduction The two main reasons why countries generally agree to sign bilateral or multilateral investment treaties (BITs or MITs) are to attract foreign direct investments, while at the same time protecting their own citizens’ investments abroad by reducing political risk. Arguably, there might be multiple added values on top of these reasons for a specific…
Chapter 11: Where Investors Go to Complain NAFTA renegotiations began last year and, with attention once again on this 23-year old trade deal, critics are taking the opportunity to voice their concerns. U.S. President Trump has himself propounded, and indeed campaigned on, an abundance of criticism directed at NAFTA. While no part of NAFTA has…
Debates about the propriety of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) were revived by a recent letter by U.S. academics, which urged the abandonment of ISDS in the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This letter repeated arguments that are familiar from prior ISDS debates, such as that ISDS “grants foreign corporations and investors rights to skirt domestic…
The Opinion delivered on 19 September 2017 by Advocate General Wathelet in the case C-284/16 Achmea has already been widely commented on in the international arbitration community. The views are either critical or approving, but so far, they have mostly been focused on whether a particular legal point made by the Advocate General was right…
Recently, it was reported that after 14 years since Zimbabwe had illegally evicted Dutch farmers from their farms, it finally agreed to pay the damages awarded under the ICSID award, which dates back in 2009. In the Funnekotter et al case, the arbitral tribunal rejected Zimbabwe’s necessity defence, which was based on the claimed need…
In the 2000s, mortgages in Swiss Franc (CHF) were very popular among consumers in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe for the acquisition of both private and commercial properties, as the CHF was a stable and reliable currency and offered lower interest rates than loans in Euro or in local currencies. When on 15 January 2015…
The year 1993 saw a significant political transition in Cambodia through the adoption of democratic principles and free market economy. Since then, many legal reforms have been made in order to attract foreign direct investment, and one of which is providing a legal framework for protecting the investment. To date, the Kingdom has signed a…
Since the first application for provisional measures suspending criminal proceedings in Tokios Tokelés v. Ukraine (ICSID Case No. ARB/02/18, Order No. 3, 18 January 2005), the number of applications before ICSID tribunals for these types of measures has steadily increased. Recent applications have been widely commented on in the arbitration community, including in this blog….
The potential clash between protection of investors under investment treaties and protection of the environment has emerged in a number of recent arbitrations. More than 60 investment disputes filed since 2012 have had some environmental component. Amongst them, there have been several cases in which States have sought to enforce environmental law against investors in…
It has been ten years since Bolivia denounced the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Convention (“ICSID Convention”), becoming the first country to withdraw from the ICSID Convention in history. True, several countries have never even signed the ICSID Convention in the first place (including large economies such as Brazil and India), but until…
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anaïs Nin) Introduction and background On 12 July 2017, CMS Hong Kong and the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) hosted the fourth joint lecture in their quarterly series focusing on the…
