The shoe has finally dropped. Ever since the Invictus Memo was released to the public we knew that the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs were considering twenty-seven different countries to enforce the $18.2 Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. With Chevron’s far-flung assets, it was plausible that the Plaintiffs would choose to enforce the judgment in countries with close ties…
On 18 April 2012, South Sudan signed and ratified the 1965 Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (the ‘ICSID Convention’). In accordance with Article 68(2) thereof, the Convention entered into force for Sudan thirty days later, i.e. on 18 May 2012. The membership of Africa’s newest republic…
In recent decades, Spanish legislators have increasingly turned their attention to private arbitration. The Spanish Arbitration Act 1953, mainly dealing with civil actions, was replaced by the 1988 Act directed at resolutions of commercial disputes, with a particular focus on international commercial arbitration. The aim was to make Spain a leader in the field, taking…
In a judgment dated 25 April 2012 (Lombard North Central plc and another v GATX Corporation [2012] EWHC 1067 (Comm)), Judge Andrew Smith of the English High Court (Commercial Court) underlined the potential risks that might arise from arbitration clauses which have a limited scope. Although this judgment is relevant to a number of different…
A recent decision of the English Commercial Court (Lombard North Central plc & Anor v GATX Corporation [2012] EWHC 1067 (Comm)) has provided some insight and clarification into how the English courts will interpret and implement Section 9(1) of the Arbitration Act 1996. Section 9 is how English law has complied with Article II(3) of…
A party who wishes to circumvent an arbitration agreement may sometimes proceed to obtain default judgment from a friendly court and then seek to enforce that judgment, under the common law, as a debt in the courts of the country where the counterparty is located. A recent Singapore decision, Giant Light Metal Technology (Kunshan) Co…
For almost 20 years, Mexico has been at the forefront of Latin-American arbitration practice. It has been widely recognized both in terms of the quality and sophistication of its practitioners, its modern legal framework (since 1993 based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration) and for its arbitration friendly judiciary. According to statistics…
Over the years, many arguments have been made for what are truly the benefits of international arbitration over local litigation. There are many factors that are listed and ensuing arguments over their continued veracity. Complaints are launched about whether such factors truly remain a benefit (the largest and most obvious one which comes to mind…
This week, Spanish energy firm Repsol put Argentina on notice of an arbitration claim under the Spain-Argentina bilateral investment treaty. The development comes as no surprise, as Repsol had been threatening for some weeks to take such a course if Argentina persisted in nationalizing the bulk of Repsol’s 57% stake in the Argentine firm YPF….
On 6 March 2012, Justice Sir David Steel of the Court of First Instance of the Dubai International Financial Centre – DIFC – rendered a decision refusing to grant a stay of the proceedings, and ignoring an option in the underlying contract to opt out of the Court’s jurisdiction by referring to LCIA arbitration. In…
When is an arbitral panel an international tribunal for purposes of Section 1782? Section 1782, of course, is the U.S. statute that authorizes federal courts to order discovery in aid of proceedings before foreign courts and international tribunals. As discussed in a forthcoming article in the Virginia Journal of International Law entitled, Ancillary Discovery to…
This post follows on from the highly informative Kluwer Arbitration Blog post by Elizabeth Kantor, “The ‘West Tankers’ Saga Continues: Can Damages Compensate for Breach of an Arbitration Clause?” Whilst that focussed principally on the implications for, and efficacy of, the type of award in issue the purpose this post is, in contrast, to look…
In the most recent of a long-running series of decisions in the West Tankers saga, the English court has found that the majority of the tribunal was wrong to decline jurisdiction to award equitable damages or to declare a party liable to indemnify the other as a result of the breach of an arbitration clause….
The concept of good faith has been a subject of perennial controversy since it was derived from the Roman legal equivalent ‘bonas fides’. Juristic views on and the legal conceptualization of the idea of good faith may often vary across the cultural divides and legal traditions. At a higher level of abstraction there may be…
In recent years, Korea has become an object of some attention in the international arbitration field. But less than 15 years ago, there was no “arbitration field” in Korea to speak of. I, myself, was a maritime lawyer and it was only a twist of fate – the request of a client – that put…
A recent administrative event in Delhi may have profound implications for the ongoing rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong as Asia’s arbitration hubs of choice. On 19 March 2012 India confirmed that it will add the Peoples’ Republic of China (including the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao) to the list of so-called…
Section 3.3.6 of the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration advise that when a “close personal friendship exists between an arbitrator and counsel of one party, as demonstrated by the fact that the arbitrator and the counsel regularly spend considerable time together unrelated to professional work commitments or the activities of professional…
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….
A central concern the in the third party funding arena is: Whether or not parties who are funded by a third party funder should be obligated to disclose this funding relationship. Looking at a recent conference in which many key funders participated on sharing their perspectives, it appears that many funders preferred to keep their…
The notion of ‘investment’ has been one of the most controversial issues in arbitral proceedings instituted under the ICSID Convention. The award rendered by the UNCITRAL arbitral tribunal in Romak v. Uzbekistan has brought the issue outside of the ICSID context and concluded that, despite the broad definitions of ‘investment’ in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs),…
The China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (“CIETAC“) has recently published its revised Arbitration Rules, which will come into force on 1 May 2012 (the “2012 Rules“). This is the seventh revision of the CIETAC Rules since they were first published in 1956. Whilst the majority of the changes in the 2012 Rules are…
As many of you know, I am the General Editor of the ITA Arbitration Report of KluwerArbitration.com database, the primary online research portal for international arbitration practitioners. On behalf of the folks at Kluwer and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, I am happy to announce an opening for the position of Managing Editor for the…
This is the third and final article in a three-part series summarising the main valuation methodologies used for the purposes of determining economic loss. In parts one and two, I provided an overview of the market-approach and income-based methodologies. I now conclude by reviewing the asset-based approach. To what extent, if any, is the sum…
Following a previous round of amendments in 2009 that came into effect on 1 January 2010, the Singapore Ministry of Law published further proposed amendments to Singapore’s International Arbitration Act (“the IAA”) on 8 March 2012. The proposals took into account views garnered from a public consultation process. There are four key proposals in this…
