Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements, New York Convention

(Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP)/ /1 Comment

Over the past decade, the 2005 Convention on Choice-of-Court Agreements (“Convention”) has been vigorously promoted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s Permanent Bureau, the European Union and others.  The Convention has been endorsed as a global instrument, appropriate for ratification by all states, that establishes an alternative to international arbitration for the resolution…

Swiss Arbitration Centre, Swiss Rules, Switzerland

(Schellenberg Wittmer Ltd)/ /Leave a comment

Undoubtedly, the date of 1 June 2021 will remain a milestone for the Swiss (and international) arbitration community. This is the date when (i) the Swiss Chambers’ Arbitration Institution (SCAI) became the Swiss Arbitration Centre (the Centre), and (ii) the revised Swiss Arbitration Rules entered into force (the 2021 Swiss Rules). The 2021 Swiss Rules,…

Procedural Fairness, Set aside an arbitral award, SIAC, Singapore, Singapore Court of Appeal, Singapore International Arbitration Centre, UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, UNCITRAL Model Law, Witness, Witness Conferencing, Witness Statement

, (Clyde & Co Clasis Singapore)/ /Leave a comment
Clyde & Co.

In CBS v CBP [2021] SGCA 4 the Singapore Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s ruling in CBP v CBS [2020] SGHC 23, being a rare example of the Singapore Courts setting aside an award. The arbitrator’s decision not to allow a hearing for oral witness evidence was found to be a breach of…

Journal of International Arbitration

(ArbBoutique & Queen Mary University of London)/ /Leave a comment

We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:   Gary Born, Anneliese Day & Hafez Virjee, Remote Hearings (2020 Survey): A Spectrum of Preferences A detailed survey of users’ experience of remote hearings shows that, as of July 2020, in-house and external…

Construction, Construction arbitration, Expert evidence, Experts

(Addleshaw Goddard LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Jeantet

This post is a non-exhaustive summary of an online ICC YAF conference organised on 27 May 2021 primarily for the benefit of the Romanian and Moldovan practitioners, but with the participation of international practitioners having a general interest in construction arbitration in Eastern Europe. The conference comprised two panel discussions, each one debating one of…

Arbitration, Broker, Execution, ICC, Turkey

( Işık & Partners Law Firm)/ /Leave a comment

The 16th ICC Turkey Arbitration Day was held virtually on 17-18 March 2021 in four sessions (click here for the event booklet). The first session was reserved for discussion of the judiciary’s approach to arbitration in Turkey. In the second session, Alexander G. Fessas, the Secretary General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, shared the…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Permanent Arbitral Institution, Russia

, (Herbert Smith Freehills LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Herbert Smith Freehills

The Russian 2016 Arbitration Reform (the “Reform”) was a game-changer for both arbitration practitioners and the arbitral institutions. One of the major implications of the Reform was that so-called “corporate” disputes (which definition covers a large number of post-M&A disputes, including those arising out of share purchase agreements and shareholders’ agreements) could now only be…

Egypt, Lloyd’s Standard Salvage and Arbitration Clauses, London Maritime Arbitrators' Association, Maritime Arbitration, Maritime Arbitration Rules of the New York Society of Maritime Arbitrators, MENA, Middle East, Shipping, York-Antwerp Rules

, (Quadrant Chambers)/ /Leave a comment

The grounding of the container carrier “EVER GIVEN” in the Suez Canal in March 2021 has been dubbed by some as “shipping’s 15 minutes of fame”. This post hitches its star to that wagon and considers the contracts, claims and dispute resolution clauses likely to be affected by this casualty.   The Casualty, Salvage and…

Arbitration Agreement, Arbitration Agreements, Dubai

, (Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP)/ /1 Comment

The Abu Dhabi Court of Cassation in Case No. 922 of 2020 recently considered the requirements that must be satisfied to conclude an arbitration agreement by powers of attorney. The judgment is the latest in a line of authorities confirming that special requirements apply to the formation of arbitration agreements (a courtesy translation of the…

English courts, English Law, London, UK, Witness Statement

, (Twenty Essex)/ /Leave a comment

This post considers Practice Direction 57AC (“PD57AC”), which changes the approach to witness evidence in the English Courts, and its potential impact on London-seated arbitration.   The New Approach to Witness Statements in English Litigation On 6 April 2021, the English Business and Property Courts marked a significant change in the approach that lawyers, and…

Africa, China, Infrastructure, Investment, Seat of the arbitration

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On 12 March 2021, Fangda Partners, ASAFO & CO and Delos Dispute Resolution hosted an interactive roundtable on “The Often-Overlooked Value of African Seats for African-Chinese Disputes”. The panelists for the roundtable discussion were Tunde Fagbohunlu SAN , Julia (Zhang) Le Roux, Michael Tam, Olga Boltenko and Peter Po Kwong Yuen, and it was moderated…

Job Opening

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In the context of the development of KluwerArbitration, the world’s leading resource for international arbitration research, Wolters Kluwer is searching for several freelance subject matter experts (SMEs) to start work in July 2021. The appointments will be for approximately six months, on a full-time basis (forty hours per week). Wolters Kluwer is developing a range…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Institutional Arbitration, Reform, Ukraine

(Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP) and (V29 Legal)/ /Leave a comment

Recent draft legislation submitted to the Ukrainian Parliament would introduce new regulations imposing stricter requirements for setting up domestic arbitral institutions (‘treteyskyi sud’) and, at the same time, introduce a framework for establishing new international arbitral institutions in Ukraine. This appears to be the latest legislative initiative in the line of recent reforms aimed at…

Investment, Investment law, Investment protection, ISDS, ISDS Reform

(Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

The 18th Annual ITA-ASIL Conference, hosted virtually for a half-day on March 23, 2021, discussed ongoing efforts at ICSID and UNCITRAL Working Group III to reform investment arbitration. José Alvarez (New York University School of Law) kicked off the conference by throwing down the gauntlet: procedural reform does not go far enough. In the long…

Annulment, Brazil, Commercial Arbitration, Confidentiality, Party autonomy

(Arbitration Research Center of Ibmec-SP)/ /Leave a comment

It is well-known that confidentiality is a particularly important mechanism for protecting the information and data contained in a process in which disclosure could cause prejudice to the parties. That is because the mere existence of a lawsuit may sometimes lead to considerable consequences for the parties, as it may affect the perception of third…

Energy Charter Treaty, Investment Arbitration, Netherlands, Set aside an arbitral award, Yukos

(Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler)/ /Leave a comment

On 23 April 2021, Paul Vlas, Advocate-General of the Dutch Supreme Court issued his opinion in the Yukos case, setting the stage for the final setting aside act in The Hague after nine years of PCA-administered arbitration and six years of setting aside litigation. Advocate-General Vlas had previously advised the Dutch Supreme Court to reject…

Arbitrators, Diversity, Iran-United States Claims Tribunal

(Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

The Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA) hosted an oral history session with The Hon. Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, interviewed by Prof. Victoria Shannon Sahani. The session, held on March 22, 2021, was part of the ITA Academic Council’s ongoing Preserving Perspectives project which aims to record the evolution of modern international arbitration in the words of…

Canada, Investment agreements, Investment Treaties, ISDS Reform, Model BIT

(Woods LLP) and (Law Offices of Kiran N Gore PLLC; The George Washington University Law School)/ /Leave a comment

On May 13, 2021, after several years of public consultations, Global Affairs Canada released a new Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement Model (“2021 Model”). The prior iteration of the FIPA Model was broadly understood to have been influenced by Canada’s experience under the NAFTA regime. Similarly, the 2021 Model benefits from Canada’s continued trade…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Code of Conduct, ICSID, ICSID Arbitration, ICSID Procedure, ICSID Proceedings, Investment Arbitration, UNCITRAL, UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules

(Richmond School of Law)/ /Leave a comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

On April 19, 2021, the Secretariats of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) released the second draft of the Code of Conduct for Adjudicators in International Investment Disputes, a key feature of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) reform process which is presently under…

Arbitrators

(Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya Disputes)/ /Leave a comment
Rising Arbitrators Initiative (RAI)

The Rising Arbitrator’s Challenge Webinar Series, organized by the Rising Arbitrator Initiative (RAI), took place online, on 22 April 2021. The event, with a regional focus on Africa, was the fifth leg of the series, with previous instalments covering North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Under the guidance of Victoria Kigen (Nairobi Centre for…

Arbitration – The International Journal of Arbitration

(General Editor International Journal of Arbitration, Mediation and Dispute Management; Queen Mary University of London), (Queen Mary University of London), (Chartered Institute of Arbitrators), and (Three Crowns)/ /Leave a comment

On Arbitrobots or Robotration There has been considerable discussion lately on the role that Artificial Intelligence (AI) may play in international arbitration (IA) in the future. While there are some interesting, indeed exciting, prospects of AI’s potential contribution to IA, there also exists a degree of hyperbole in what is predicted. Information technology has already…

Arbitration, Arbitration Proceedings, COVID-19, Intellectual Property, International arbitration, Investment, Investment Arbitration, Investment law, Patents

(Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler)/ /Leave a comment

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, pharmaceutical companies have engaged in a highly competitive and risky vaccine race. In less than 10 months from the declaration of the global pandemic, the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech received its first regulatory approval, followed by the success stories of other companies. The swiftness of these results was praised as “unprecedented”…

CJEU, Energy Charter Treaty, European Law, European Union, Intra-EU ISDS, Investment Arbitration, Investment Disputes

, (International Investment Law Centre Cologne)/ /Leave a comment

The investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism provided by Art. 26 (2) (c) of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is highly relevant to the protection of intra-EU investments.1)In 2018, about 45 per cent of all treaty-based intra-EU investment arbitrations were brought pursuant to the ECT. See UNCTAD, Fact Sheet on Intra-European Union Investor-State Arbitration Cases, IIA…

COVID-19, LegalTech, MENA, Technology, UAE arbitration chapter, UAE Federal Arbitration Law

(Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP) and (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP)/ /Leave a comment

There is at least one commonality between new technologies and arbitration in that they both aim to make processes more accessible to users.  Indeed, the two should go hand-in-hand.  After a brief overview of the interplay between technology and arbitration in general, this post focuses on the position in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  It…