In December 2015, I published an article examining whether there was a trend towards the elimination of umbrella clauses from investment agreements, be they bilateral, multilateral, or model investment treaties. By that time, model bilateral investment treaties (BITs) from the United States, France, Canada, Colombia, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and many prominent…
by Patricio Grané and Brian Bombassaro The year 2012 brought eight new investor-state arbitration decisions on umbrella clauses.1)(1) Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. v. Republic of Paraguay, ICSID Case No. ARB/07/29, Award (Feb. 10, 2012), (2) EDF International S.A., SAUR International S.A. and Leon Participaciones Argentinas S.A. v. Argentine Republic, ICSID Case No. ARB/03/23, Award…
by Inna Uchkunova and Oleg Temnikov Foreword “The whole exercise was great fun and for me, I was then 26 years old, a great eye-opener – I learned a lot.” – Sir Elihu Lauterpacht on his advice given to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. in 1954, on which occasion it emerged the idea that “any contract…
The problem of the law applicable to State contracts (i.e. contracts concluded between a foreign national and a State or a state entity) as well as the responsibility of States for the breach of these contracts has entertained the minds of scholars and practitioners ever since the famous PCIJ dictum in the 1929 Serbian Loans…
In a recent award that arguably represents a high-water mark for the operation of an umbrella clause in ICSID jurisprudence thus far, a tribunal comprising Stanimir A. Alexandrov (as President), Donald Francis Donovan and Pablo Garcia Mexia held Paraguay liable to SGS Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. (“SGS”) for failing to pay for services rendered….
