White & Case LLP and the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are partnering once again to carry out cutting-edge empirical research in the field of international arbitration, with the launch of the 2018 International Arbitration Survey. International arbitration is the natural choice for resolving business disputes because it is…
When ABBA launched “The Winner Takes It All” in 1980, modern arbitration was still in its infancy. The ICC case numbers were just about to become four-digit, while the cases administered by ICSID could still be counted on two hands. Yet already at that time, “The Winner Takes It All” exemplified one of the two…
Volume 34, Issue 5 contains: Anthony C. Sinclair & Epaminontas E. Triantafilou, Specific Performance Under Commercial Contracts with Sovereign States Abstract: Awarding specific performance against a state is widely considered an affront to principles of sovereignty and non-interference. Even when permitted under the applicable law and arbitral rules, specific performance against a state may therefore…
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…
The latest large consumer data breach, this time involving Equifax, has also shed a sharp light on an ongoing controversy about consumers’ access to justice. In taking steps to ameliorate its PR crisis, Equifax found itself right in the middle of the dispute about class actions and arbitration clauses. On September 7, Equifax revealed that…
The Editorial Board of Kluwer Arbitration Blog announces the opening of the following positions with Kluwer Arbitration Blog: Assistant Editor for Europe, Assistant Editor for Asia (Hong Kong and PR China) and Assistant Editor for Africa. The Assistant Editors report directly to the Associate Editors and are expected to (1) collect, edit and review guest…
Gretta Walters is an Associate at Chaffetz Lindsey LLP in New York, where she represents individual and corporate clients in international and cross-border disputes in arbitration and in state and federal court. She has experience in arbitral proceedings under the arbitration rules of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),…
The decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal in Wilson Taylor Asia Pacific Pte Ltd v. Dyna-Jet Pte Ltd ([2017] SGCA 32) added another chapter to the debate on the validity of unilateral option clauses (or ‘sole option clauses’) in contracts. The Singapore Court of Appeal reaffirmed the Singapore High Court’s decision to uphold the…
Non-arbitrability of disputes is a ground for setting aside the arbitral awards under Sections 34(2)(b) and 48(2) of the Arbitration and Conciliation act 1996 (the “Act”), the award is against the public policy of India. Arbitrability, here, refers to the objective arbitrability of the disputes, i.e., whether the national law imposes any restriction on the…
This post critically examines the recent Supreme Court judgment in TRF Limited vs. Energo Engineering Private Limited where the court held that a person who is ineligible to be appointed as an arbitrator cannot even nominate an arbitrator. This judgment was in the context of a unilateral arbitration clause (“unilateral clause”) in which one party…
From cultural confusion to cognitive biases and recent apology legislation in Hong Kong, the recent posts on the Kluwer Mediation Blog continue to address a compelling assortment of topics. In Cultural Confusion – A Good Thing for Mediation?, Nadja Alexander shares an encounter she had with a group of mediators to highlight the cultural confusion…
This is the final one in sequel of four parts on the status of the DIFC Courts as a conduit jurisdiction. It reports on a further number of recent decisions of the Dubai-DIFC Judicial Committee – also known as the Judicial Tribunal or in shorthand the JT – that question the DIFC Courts’ role as…
The Hungarian Parliament has recently adopted a new Act on Arbitration, which will enter into force on 1 January 2018 (the Act). The new Act (based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration as amended in 2006 (the Model Law)) implements changes that are likely to have a considerable impact on the Hungarian…
The Editorial Board of Kluwer Arbitration Blog announces the opening of the following positions with Kluwer Arbitration Blog: Assistant Editor for Europe, Assistant Editor for Asia (Hong Kong and PR China) and Assistant Editor for Africa. The Assistant Editors report directly to the Associate Editors and are expected to (1) collect, edit and review guest…
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…
“BITs and arbitration centers, such as ICSID, are an expression of an unjust moral order”, said Ecuador’s former President, Rafael Correa, back in 2014. Such animadversion led the country to denounce all its bilateral investment treaties (BITs) earlier this year. The Latin American nation’s feud with BITs and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment…
Recent political developments have resulted in considerable geopolitical uncertainty and presented challenges to the international order. With the UK’s vote to exit the European Union, the election of Donald Trump as US president, the Western sanctions against Russia, and the rising North Korea nuclear tensions, 2017 ushers in a turbulent time where commercial parties’ usual…
In January 2017, the new Rules of the Maritime Arbitration Commission at the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry were adopted (“MAC Rules”). The Rules implement new regulations which comply with the latest tendencies in arbitration. MAC was established in 1930 in Soviet Russia and since then it administered about 4,500 disputes. In 2016 –…
A recent decision by the English Court shows once again the very high bar that a claimant must reach to enforce an award that had been set aside by the court at the seat of jurisdiction. The judgment handed down in Maximov v OJSC Novolipetsky Metallurgichesky Kombinat [2017] EWHC 1911 (Comm) on 27 July 2017…
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…
I. Introduction On 19 September 2017 the Advocate General (AG) to the Court of Justice to the European Union (CJEU) Melchior Wathelet delivered his long-awaited Opinion in Case C-284/16 Slowakische Republik v Achmea BV. As already explained in another post, Bundesgerichtshof (“German Federal Court of Justice”) requested a preliminary ruling from the CJEU on the…
Cybersecurity bears particular significance to the realm of international arbitration. In addition to the ambient cybersecurity risks faced by each participant in international arbitral proceedings, the need to share information between the parties, the tribunal and the institution for the resolution of a dispute increases the likelihood that data will be lost or breached. Arbitral…
Information dissemination is the flavor of the decade. Processing information with our busy lives has become harder than ever and companies are hard at work to ensure knowledge reaches as many people around the globe as possible. These efforts are not without their threats. The rise of what might be called the “fake news” movement…
Over the last few years, legitimacy has become a hot topic in international arbitration. Although the investment regime has borne the brunt of the attack, commercial proceedings have also suffered from criticism. The range of voices questioning the propriety of arbitration has been at times quite diverse and has included journalists, judges, governments and human…
