In K.V.C. Rice Intertrade Co Ltd v Asian Mineral Resources Pte Ltd [2017] SGHC 32, the Singapore High Court enforced so-called “bare” arbitration clauses, i.e., clauses that specify neither the place of arbitration nor the means of appointing arbitrators. In Singapore, the President of the SIAC Court of Arbitration is designated as the statutory appointing…
On 30 December 2016, The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) finally released the first edition of its Investment Arbitration Rules (IA Rules). The IA Rules were first published as draft rules on 1 February 2016, and were discussed in a previous article. The IA Rules, which came into effect on 1 January 2017, now reflect…
SIAC released new rules of procedure (“SIAC Rules”) for the management of its arbitration practice, effective 1 August, 2016. Some of the new provisions are ground-breaking. New provisions include a consolidation procedure, a joinder procedure, and even rules providing for early dismissal of baseless claims. The SIAC Rules have drawn great attention to its numerous…
“Help! I need somebody Help! Not just anybody Help! You know I need someone, help … And now my life has changed in oh so many ways, My independence seems to vanish in the haze …” Help raises a question of need, but does it lead to a loss of the fundamental decision-making power vested…
There has been a lot of attention paid to the various innovations in the new SIAC Rules 2016 such as the possibility of an early dismissal of claims under the new Rule 29. One of the changes to the Rules which has generally been overlooked is that they now require consent of the parties and…
“When Justice Delayed Would be Justice Denied: Emergency Arbitrators and Interim Measures in International Arbitration” was the subject of the 28th Annual Workshop of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA), which took place on 16 June 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Under the leadership of ITA’s Chair, Abby Cohen Smutny (White & Case), and the conference…
Following the long-awaited release – on 1 July 2016 – of SIAC’s new arbitration rules (“SIAC Rules 2016”), practitioners in and outside of Asia have enthusiastically supplied a flurry of commentary and client briefings on this historic moment in the SIAC arbitration. Descriptive or analytical, the commentaries are unanimous in positing that changes in Singapore’s…
More or less since 2010, the topic of third party funding (“TPF”) in connection with international arbitration has been everywhere (heard of, seen in practice, written about, presented at conferences, and so on). In a series of recent developments however, TPF has been, for the first time, made subject to mandatory provisions contained in the…
The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (“SIAC”) published a draft of new investment arbitration rules (the “draft SIAC IA Rules”) for public comment on 1 Feb 2016. They will be finalized on 27 May 2016. The draft SIAC IA Rules are a unique hybrid of modern commercial arbitration rules and specialist investment arbitration rules (e.g. the…
