The Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Act”) makes it clear that an arbitration between an Indian and a foreign party can be governed by foreign law and can have a foreign seat. This is defined as ‘international commercial arbitration’ under the Act. However, whether two Indian parties can agree to a foreign seat for…
The legal consequences of a breach of a contract tainted by corruption are better understood through a hypothetical: Contractor A of country X enters into negotiations with B, the Minister of Economics and Development of country Y, with a view to concluding an agreement on a large infrastructure project (“the Contract”). B requests the payment…
Overview On 1 August 2015, the new National Civil and Commercial Code (the “Code”) entered into force in Argentina. Articles 1649 to 1665 of the Code incorporate the new regulations governing arbitration. Although not expressly stated, it may be understood that it applies to both domestic and international arbitration. In accordance with the Argentinian federal…
The last four months of 2015 have been significant for the design of future investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), at least as far as political will goes for the European Union’s (EU) international investment policy. The European Commission’s May 2015 concept paper on ‘Investment in TTIP and beyond – the path for reform’ publicly expressed the…
White Industries woke up India to the realities of Investment Treaty Arbitrations (“ITA”) during the end of 2011. Today, India has one of the highest numbers of ITA claims pending against it. The Government of India felt the need to have a new Model BIT to renegotiate existing treaties and to use it as a…
More than one year has passed since the U.S. and Cuba started to rekindle their relationship and restore economic ties. The Cuban government is opening the country to foreign investment, the U.S. is relaxing the sanctions imposed on Cuba, and both countries reopened their embassies after half century of frosty relations. Despite U.S. sanctions, Cuba…
and Duarte G. Henriques, BCH Lawyers 1. Until very recently the swaps industry seemed to be reluctant to use alternative dispute resolution or at least was very indifferent as to the choice of the dispute resolution mechanism, with disputes almost always being left for the courts of either London or New York to decide, these…
“A course in international arbitration that does not cover the Libya oil arbitration cases of the 1970s would probably be considered incomplete by most standards.” (Arbitration in Asia and Africa: Profiles of Selected Arbitral Institutions, Won Kidane, China-Africa Dispute Settlement: The Law, Economics and Culture of Arbitration, International Arbitration Law Library, Volume 23, p.367) This…
2015 has witnessed numerous interesting legal developments in the field of international arbitration in Latin America, although these have been wide-ranging in nature and have not always followed the same path. While some jurisdictions have taken legislative steps to introduce or consolidate pro-arbitration legislation in accordance with internationally accepted standards, others, perhaps influenced by negative…
In some legal systems, a shareholder of a company may act for the company in certain circumstances. When a shareholder is permitted to do so, questions may arise whether the shareholder may invoke (and is bound by) an arbitration clause in the contract. The arbitrability of derivative shareholders’ actions is largely unclear in comparative legal…
For the last several years, Russia has undergone arbitration reform initiated by the President in or around 2013. The reform is aimed at increasing the credibility of this dispute resolution mechanism in Russia and updating the framework regulating domestic and international arbitration by addressing many long known gaps. The latest development occurred on 29 December…
The Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce began the new year by announcing two interesting and even bold innovations. The ICC Court will now, according to the ICC’s own press release, “publish on its website the names of the arbitrators sitting in ICC cases, their nationality, as well as whether the appointment…
A July 2015 decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (Tribunal Superior de Justicia), the competent court to decide on the setting aside of an award when the seat of the arbitration is Madrid, declared non-arbitrable a controversy between two multinational Spanish operators in the natural gas sector. The dispute arose over the…
By: Kiran N. Gore and Alexandros Diplas The Blog recently featured a book review of the recently published Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, edited by Professor Chiara Giorgetti of University of Richmond Law School. This review was a timely follow up to the December 10, 2015 book launch…
This is Part II of a previous blog, discussing a recent Award dated 27 October 2015 rendered in ICSID Case No. ARB/11/33 – Adel A Hamadi Al Tamimi v. Sultanate of Oman and dismissing all claims against Oman (see Part I of the blog). By way of reminder, the claims brought in these ICSID proceedings…
By a Final Award dated 27 October 2015 (see ICSID Case No. ARB/11/33 – Adel A Hamadi Al Tamimi v. Sultanate of Oman), an international tribunal constituted under the International Convention for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), also commonly referred to as the Washington Convention, dismissed all claims brought by a US national against the…
by Nikos Lavranos, European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA) Whereas all the attention in the TTIP-debate has been focusing on the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions and, more recently, on the proposal of the European Commission for the creation of an investment court system (ICS), the proposed energy chapter – with potentially much…
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and should not be regarded as representative of, or binding upon ArbitralWomen and/or the author’s law firm. On 12 November 2015, the European Commission rendered public and put on the negotiation table with the United States a proposal regarding the investment chapter of…
by Maria Laura Marceddu, School of Law, King’s College London Over the last years, as discussed on this blog (see here), there have been many interesting developments in the field of transparency in investor-State arbitration: the 2006 ICSID amendments, the 2013 UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (“the 2013 UNCITRAL Rules”) (see here), and…
As we settle in to enjoy the delights of the season and mark the end of another calendar year, we might ponder: What if Charles Dickins’ Ghost of Christmas Present went back to visit the international arbitration practitioners of 1995? The specter’s account of international arbitration today would certainly be unbelievable to our professional predecessors…
The Indian Government recently promulgated two ordinances (i.e., the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Ordinance (“Ordinance”) and the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance (“Arbitration Ordinance” – an analysis of the Arbitration Ordinance by the authors is available here), that will have a far-reaching impact on the practice of arbitration…
Amir Matar Associate, Sarie El Din & Partners Legal Advisors & Founding member of the Arab Legal Forum On 12 November, fifteen of the foremost arbitration specialists in the world met in Cairo to discuss the future of arbitration in the Euro-Mediterranean area (comprising, collectively, the European Union (EU) and Middle East and North African (MENA)…
Challenges of arbitrators seem to have become increasingly common in international investment arbitral proceedings, yet they also seem to be seldom successful. Challenges and Recusals of Judges and Arbitrators in International Courts and Tribunals, a new edited volume by Chiara Giorgetti, analyses arbitrators and judges’ challenges and addresses some fundamental, related questions: What does the…
by Catherine H. Gibson (Assistant Editor for North America) The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement (official text here) is one in a series of significant investment agreements that the United States will negotiate in the coming months and years – next in line are the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement and the United States-China bilateral…
