If the answer is London, Paris, Geneva, New York, Tokyo and Singapore, what is the question? International cities? Fashion hot spots? Location of Manchester United supporters’ clubs? It may well be the answer to all three questions (although I confess that I have not actually checked the Manchester United one), but they are also the…
On 2 November 2012, President Thein Sein approved, after several months of intense debate between Parliament and the Government, Myanmar’s new Foreign Investment Law (‘FIL’ or ‘the Law’). The new Law revises the framework for foreign investment in Myanmar which had been in place since a military coup in 1988. Considering the country’s abundant natural…
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 Kah Cheong Lye (Partner) and Chuan Tat Yeo (Associate), Norton Rose (Asia) LLP Like computer programs, the length of time between updates for institutional rules seems to get shorter and shorter. New editions of institutional arbitral rules were introduced by the SIAC in 2010, the ICC in 2012, and the HKIAC’s revised Administered Arbitration…
My friend and colleague David Caron, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named the new Dean at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. The press release is here. I have known David Caron for over twenty years and always thought he would…
On November 9, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant. A decision will be rendered in 2013. At issue is the enforceability of an arbitration clause that includes a class action waiver in a federal antitrust case. The case has attracted considerable attention in the United States,…
As described in Part 1 of this post, the mounting debate about investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) has crescendoed in the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. There are at least two “schools” of concern with ISDR, both of them voiced inside and outside the TPP context. Threats to Public Interest Policy For a growing array of…
In International Research Corp PLC v Lufthansa Systems Asia Pacific Pte Ltd [2012] SGHC 226 (per Chan Seng Onn J) (“International Research”), the Singapore High Court addressed the issue of whether an arbitration clause contained in one contract between two parties binds a third party who subsequently enters into a supplemental agreement with the original…
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations have become the territory where a brewing perfect storm over investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) is making landfall. The June 2012 leak of the draft TPP Investment Chapter text added energy, but much more is fueling this tempest. In general the ISDR system is coming under increased scrutiny. Public and policymaker concerns…
By Pia Eberhardt, Corporate Europe Observatory, and Cecilia Olivet, Transnational Institute At the end of November, Corporate Europe Observatory and the Transnational Institute published Profiting from Injustice, a report that looks at the role of law firms, arbitrators and third-party funders in investment treaty arbitration. In it, we argued that the arbitration industry has fuelled…
In the final days of 2012, I spent some time flipping back through the stories we’ve covered at Investment Arbitration Reporter, looking to identify the year’s most notable developments. I’ve settled on ten that I think are particularly noteworthy. Half of them are legal in nature, and are highlighted below. The other five are in…
As its Council Member I attended the ICC Institute of World Business Law’s 32nd annual meeting on ‘Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration’ held in Paris on 26 November 2012. It was a grand success as it drew many professionals, arbitrators, experts, academic specialists and, above all, representatives from some major third-party funding bodies such as…
By Claudia Ludwig and Jennifer Hartzler Whenever a hearing in an arbitration is on the horizon, the question of how far you can go in preparing your witnesses arises. Apart from particularly litigious clients, most clients will not have appeared as a witness in an arbitration or any other proceedings before. They are therefore regularly…
Arbitration is underpinned by natural justice. Article 18 of the Model Law, enshrining the right of the parties to be treated with equality, and given a full opportunity to present their case, was described by UNCITRAL in 1985 as the “Magna Carta of Arbitral Procedure”. Yet the Model Law does not in Articles 34 and…
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…
By Tai-Heng Cheng* & Lucas Bento** Introduction On October 5th, 2012, a split ICSID tribunal determined that the Republic of Ecuador had breached the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”), and awarded damages of US$1.77 billion (US$2.3 billion with interest applied), reportedly the largest award ever to have been issued by an ICSID tribunal. This award…
Two major events have taken place recently regarding the situation of Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between European Member States (“Intra-EU BITs”) and Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between an European Member State and a State not Member of the EU (“Extra-EU BITs”). The fate of these agreements was surrounded up until now by a veil of…
There are many clients who are often engaged in industrious works that result in disputes. Typically, the applicable arbitral agreements requirement submitting claims to international arbitration and, in this author’s opinion, appropriately so. However, these same clients may also be subject to frequent claim assertions that lack any true merit. Despite this, there is not…
In a recent post, here, I argued that the time has come to move on from the gumshoe clue-hunting approach currently employed to select international arbitrators. Existing practices are severely outdated and unduly expensive in an era of information and technological efficiency. The process for selecting arbitrators, I argued, should be more transparent and key…
Nathalie Voser and Anya George Few Swiss cases have sparked as much debate in the arbitration community as the Swiss Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Vivendi vs. Elektrim. In that decision, the Supreme Court upheld the award of an arbitral tribunal seated in Switzerland which had declined jurisdiction over one of the respondents, Elektrim, after…
Whereas cases of direct expropriation have become relatively rare in international investment arbitration and claims of breach of fair and equitable treatment obligation or indirect expropriation are currently more common, the profile of respondents in ICSID arbitration proceedings has also changed. However, if both investors and host governments are likely to agree that States may…
On 14 October 2012, Justice David Williams of the DIFC Court of First Instance (Dubai International Financial Centre) applied a course correction by issuing a decision confirming the jurisdiction of the DIFC Courts to grant a stay in the presence of a valid arbitration agreement providing for a seat of arbitration outside the DIFC. Justice…
In the recent decision of PT Pukuafu Indah and others v. Newmont Indonesia Ltd and another ([2012] SGHC 187) the Singapore High Court (the Court) confirmed that it did not have jurisdiction to set aside an interim anti-suit injunction ordered by an arbitral tribunal. In reaching this decision, the Court added to a growing body…
A few months ago I wrote a post on this Blog about what I saw as “work left to do” in the Spanish arbitration system. I started with the need to build a regional court of arbitration on a par with those well-known centres in other jurisdictions, with the fundamental aim of taking advantage of…
