Premium article - December 14, 2016
Arbitrators from the US and Western Europe are getting the lion's share of appointments in ICC cases while women are selected around 20% of the time, according to disclosures by the institution over the past six months. Since the ICC International Court of Arbitration began disclosing the composition of its panels in June, it has published the names of 126 men and 36 women sitting on 100 tribunals. The table of names only covers cases filed after 1 January whose terms of reference were...
Premium article - December 14, 2016
A Hong Kong court has refused to allow AIG to appeal a decision to uphold a US$475 million award despite the US insurer's arguments that the ICC tribunal erred by applying equitable principles to reach a "fair" decision. On 6 December, Judge Mimmie Chan in the Hong Kong Court of First Instance rejected AIG's application for leave to appeal a 30 August decision in which she had refused to set aside the award in favour of Chinese insurer Huaxia. The judge said she was not satisfied that AIG...
Premium article - December 14, 2016
Algerian state-owned energy company Sonatrach says an UNCITRAL tribunal has upheld its right to terminate contracts for the exploration and development of two oilfields - three months after a Swiss court ruled that the arbitration didn't have to begin afresh after being paused during a failed conciliation. Sonatrach announced yesterday that an UNCITRAL tribunal had issued a confidential award on 12 December upholding its claims against a British Virgin Islands subsidiary of Paris-based oil company...
Premium article - December 13, 2016
An English court has refused to order disclosure in support of a potential LCIA case between two shareholders in one of Eastern Europe's largest plastics companies - saying the request was too broad and that the contract relied upon had been superseded. In a judgment dated 9 December, Mr Justice Flaux rejected the request by British Virgin Islands investment vehicle Ramilos Trading against British national Valentin Buyanovsky, ruling that the 39 questions it had posed went "beyond the norm"...
Premium article - December 09, 2016
Bulgaria's national electricity company NEK has paid €602 million to a Russian state-owned entity to honour an ICC award, ending a politically sensitive dispute over a nuclear power plant that also gave rise to the threat of an investment treaty claim. NEK paid the money today to Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, to settle an award issued in June by an ICC tribunal seated in Geneva and made up of Switzerland's Wolfgang Peter, Spain's Bernardo Cremades...
Premium article - December 09, 2016
The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law is to review a paper on the impact of insolvency on international arbitrations when it convenes in Vienna in July, with a view to creating clarity as to how the two intersect and even exploring the use of arbitration for cross-border insolvency proceedings The paper written by former US bankruptcy judge Samuel Bufford with Stephan Madaus, a professor at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, was presented to the International Insolvency...
Premium article - December 07, 2016
In a closely watched case that has divided Asia's two leading arbitration jurisdictions, Hong Kong's Court of Appeal has upheld the enforcement of a US$130 million SIAC award against Indonesia's Lippo Group - even though the bulk of the award has been declared unenforceable by the courts in Singapore. On 5 December, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal upheld a first-instance ruling from last year that Lippo was time-barred from challenging the enforcement of the award in favour of Malaysian broadcasting...
Premium article - December 06, 2016
COUNSEL REVEALED. A nickel producer partly owned by Russian metals giants Interros and Rusal has filed an LCIA claim worth over US$270 million against a liquidated state mining company in Botswana following the failed purchase of a South African mine. Moscow-based Norilsk Nickel - the largest producer of nickel in the world - announced on 30 November that its Mauritian and South African subsidiaries have filed for arbitration against BCL (which is fully owned by Botswana's government) and a...
Premium article - December 02, 2016
In a bid to become a "premier hub" for intellectual property disputes in the Asia-Pacific region, Hong Kong has published a bill proposing to amend its arbitration ordinance to clarify that IP disputes are arbitrable and that enforcement of IP-related awards does not breach public policy. The bill, available in English and Chinese, was published in the government's gazette today. It follows a consultation paper released by the government a year ago, which proposed amending the arbitration ordinance...
Premium article - November 30, 2016
Four years after he was admitted for the landmark Astro v Lippo case, English barrister Toby Landau QC has been denied permission to appear in the Singapore courts on behalf of a Chinese client in a challenge to a US$149 million ICC award. In a ruling on 28 November, Singapore's High Court refused to admit Landau to represent China Machine New Energy Corporation (CNMC), saying the issues involved in the set-aside application were "not sufficiently novel or complex beyond the competence of local...