Arbitration institution, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Australia, HKIAC, HKIAC Rules, ICC, ICC Rules, Secretary of the Arbitral Tribunal

(Australian National University)/ /Leave a comment

On 1 January 2017, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (‘ACICA’) released a new Guideline on the Use of Tribunal Secretaries. This new Guideline addresses a silence in the existing ACICA Arbitration Rules as to the scope for tribunals to appoint arbitral secretaries, and the basis upon which they might be appointed. This post…

Arbitration, Arbitrator Intelligence, Surveys

(Bocconi University)/ /Leave a comment
Arbitrator Intelligence

The Arbitrator Intelligence Questionnaire (AIQ) is a feedback questionnaire that will be used by Arbitrator Intelligence (AI) to collect information on case management and decision making practices of international arbitrators. After pilot testing and extensively vetting the AIQ, we are now asking for public comments to help us further refine it. A demonstration version of…

Arbitral Tribunal, Arbitration, Commercial Arbitration, Confidentiality

(National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad))/ /3 Comments

The terms ‘Privacy’ and ‘Confidentiality’ had been used in arbitration interchangeably until the latter half of 20th century. While ‘Privacy’ means that no third party can attend arbitral conferences and hearings, ‘Confidentiality’ refers to non-disclosure of specific information in public. Private hearings do not necessarily attach confidentiality obligations to the parties to arbitration. The general…

Domestic Courts, Due process, England, English Arbitration Act, English Law, Uncategorized

(Hughes Hubbard LLP) and (Enyo Law LLP)/ /Leave a comment

The first blog in this two-part series, published last year, discussed the growing concern of arbitration users over “due process paranoia”. In that first blog, due process paranoia was defined as the perceived reluctance by arbitral tribunals to act decisively (for example by rejecting applications for extensions of time, refusing amendments to submissions, rejecting new…

Arbitration Proceedings, Ecuador, Investment protection, Latin America, Uncategorized

(Pérez Bustamante & Ponce and Universidad San Francisco de Quito) and (Coordinating Ministry of Production, Employment and Competitiveness of Ecuador)/ /Leave a comment

Article 19 of the Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships and Foreign Investment Act (“PPP Act”) recognizes local and international arbitration as one of the dispute resolution methods that has arisen in Public-Private Partnership agreements (“PPP agreements”).  Article 20 of this Act and articles 19, 20, 21, and 22 of its Regulations set forth certain rules for…

Appeal, Arbitral Award, Arbitration, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitrator Intelligence, Arbitrators, Diversity, Financial Industry, Investment Arbitration, Third party funding, Transparency

(Corrs Chambers Westgarth)/ /Leave a comment
Young ICCA

2016 was an important year for international arbitration. Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales challenged the legitimacy of international arbitration, while supporters such as former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (Robert French AC) came forward to defend its coexistence with commercial courts. Several institutions such as ACICA, SIAC and KCAB updated…

Arbitration Pledge, Arbitrators, Diversity, ICSID Arbitration, Transparency

, (Linklaters)/ /Leave a comment
Linklaters

New years are a great opportunity to take stock and to prepare for future developments, despite the obvious difficulties in predicting what the main trends will be. This is also the case for 2017. Looking back to 2016 there are two topics that immediately stand out: gender diversity and transparency. Both topics were subject to…

Appeal, Appellate Body, Arbitration, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitration Proceedings, India

(Kachwaha & Partners)/ /5 Comments

Appellate arbitration clauses provide for an appellate mechanism against an award rendered between the concerned parties by subjecting the dispute through another arbitration to eliminate all potential errors and obtain correction of the same. Not all arbitration disputes are suitable for an appellate review. But in cases where parties place higher importance on the correctness…

Construction arbitration, Dispute Resolution Boards, Emergency Arbitrator, interim relief

(Herbert Smith Freehills LLP)/ /3 Comments
Herbert Smith Freehills

Arbitration is an increasingly popular form of dispute resolution in the field of construction, particularly for international projects where parties are of different nationalities, and where at least one party is unlikely to be operating on home soil. However, a commonly cited disadvantage of arbitration as opposed to court litigation is that there may not…

Kluwer Mediation Blog, Mediation

(Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London)/ /Leave a comment

From mediation competitions in Panjim, India and Paris, a proposed mediation law in Lithuania and an exploration of how Game Theory might help us better analyse the role of mediator, the month of January saw the usual breadth of topics on the Kluwer Mediation Blog. Perhaps one of the following posts may take your fancy:…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitration Proceedings, Arbitrator Challenges, Arbitrators, Expedited arbitration, Multiple parties, Russia

(Karimullin Law Firm)/ /Leave a comment

Arbitration has become a preferred method for the resolution of international commercial disputes in Russia, mostly thanks to the activities of the Moscow-based International Commercial Arbitration Court (“ICAC“, the Russian acronym “MKAS“) at the RF Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Established in 1932 as the Foreign Trade Arbitration Commission placed under the USSR National Chamber…

Arbitration, Argentina, Consolidation, Latin America, Uncategorized, Uruguay

(Permanent Court of Arbitration)/ /Leave a comment

In Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co, the US Supreme Court stated that “[a] contractual provision specifying in advance the forum in which disputes shall be litigated and the law to be applied is an almost indispensable precondition to achievement of the orderliness and predictability essential to any international business transaction.”  While this statement holds almost invariably…

Arbitral Award, Argentina, BIT, Damages, Damages experts, Uncategorized

(Herbert Smith Freehills) and (AlixPartners LLP)/ /Leave a comment

On December 21, 2016, the Tribunal in Hochtief v Argentina issued an award on damages against Argentina in an arbitration brought under the Argentina-Germany BIT.  The Claimant had alleged multiple treaty breaches by Argentina, arising out of the 2000 economic crisis, and originally sought US$ 54 million in damages.  Although the Tribunal found that Argentina…

Arbitration, IBA, ICC, PCA, SCC, Stockholm Treaty Lab

(Climate Change Counsel)/ /Leave a comment

Nearly one hundred climate scientists, economists, policy specialists, investors, and lawyers recently convened in Stockholm for the conference “Bridging the Climate Change Policy Gap: The Role of International Law and Arbitration” organized jointly by the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (“the SCC”), the International Bar Association, the International Chamber of Commerce and…

Arbitration, Diversity, Surveys

(University of Aberdeen)/ /3 Comments

Diversity in arbitral tribunals has already received a considerable amount of attention at this blog, especially in regards to gender diversity (post are available here, here, and here). The discussion is, of course, still ongoing and far from reaching the desired goals. On 10 January 2017, Berwin Leighton Paisner released an annual arbitration survey titled…

Arbitration Act, Arbitration institution, Arbitrators, Bulgaria, Consumer disputes, Set aside an arbitral award

(Colibra Insurance)/ /Leave a comment

Background Bulgarian arbitration law has been an area of rare developments. It is incorporated in the International Commercial Arbitration Act (“ICAA”), adopted in 1988 as almost a direct translation of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration in its 1985 version. The only major reform of ICAA was its extension to arbitrations between entirely…

Damages, Damages experts, Interest rates, LIBOR

, (Charles River Associates)/ /Leave a comment

The selection of an interest rate to apply to an arbitral damages award can be an important determinant of the total award. For example, prejudgment interest added 26% to damages across 63 ICSID awards since 2000. Consistent with this notion, many international investment treaties specify claimants be compensated at a reasonable or normal “commercial rate.”…

Arbitration, Confidentiality, Confidentiality and Transparency, Croatia, Independence and Impartiality, International arbitration, Slovenia

(Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia)/ /Leave a comment

The first weeks of 2017 have again seen an exchange between Croatia and Slovenia about the continued work of the Arbitral Tribunal expected to decide this year on the course of the boundary between the two states. The Tribunal – formed under the 2009 Arbitration Agreement – will do so despite Croatia’s decision to terminate…

Arbitration, Document Production, Evidence, Procedure

(Schoenherr)/ /4 Comments
Schoenherr

Having disposed of yet another forest worth of pristine hearing bundles, I wonder: when will arbitration finally go paperless? Gillian Lemaire asked the same question in a 2014 piece called “Where Do We Stand?” She looked at the legal and factual obstacles that paperless arbitrations face. Finding that, in reality, there were few, she proposed…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Investment, Investment Arbitration, Investment protection, SIAC, Singapore, Singapore International Arbitration Centre

(Corrs Chambers Westgarth)/ /Leave a comment
Young ICCA

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…

Applicable Law, Arbitral seat, Arbitration Agreement, Arbitration clause, Commercial Arbitration, Governing Law, Seat of the arbitration, Separability

(Al Tamimi & Company)/ /Leave a comment

Introduction In BCY v BCZ [2016] SGHC 249, the High Court of Singapore found that parties could not be bound by an arbitration agreement that was part of an unexecuted underlying contract. This post examines the analysis taken by the Singapore High Court vis-à-vis the Swiss Supreme Court, in a similar fact pattern.   The…

Italy, Third party funding

, (Lombardi Segni e Associati)/ /Leave a comment

On Friday 13 January 2017, the Italian law firm Lombardi Segni e Associati hosted an ICC YAF event on Third-Party Funding (“TPF”) at its Milan office. The debate was introduced by Philippe Pinsolle (Partner, Quinn Emmanuel), key-note speaker of the event. Yasmin Mohammad (Senior Counsel, Vannin Capital), Shannon Lazzarini (Head of Group Litigation, Unicredit) and…

Admissibility, Arbitration, Arbitration Proceedings, Preliminary Ruling, SCC Rules, Summary procedure

(Akbaba Legal)/ /Leave a comment

The new arbitration rules of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (“SCC Rules” or “Rules”) entered into force on 1 January 2017. These Rules introduced a new procedure in Article 39 that is, in fact, uncommon to most of the renowned arbitration rules, including the ICC Rules of Arbitration (2012), the LCIA…

Anti-ISDS Propaganda, Arbitration, Arbitration Proceedings, BIT, Investment Arbitration, ISDS, Poland

(Kancelaria Adwokacka Adwokat Marcin Orecki)/ /Leave a comment

Much ink has recently been spilt on the Investor State Dispute Settlement (“ISDS”) system, especially in the light of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (“CETA”), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“TTIP”) (summary of criticism recently collected by G. Kaufmann-Kohler, M. Potesta, at 10, available here). The existence of a potential overlap and…