The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (“ICSID”) has released case statistics for 2020 (available here) showing a record number of new cases. While the figures confirm that the Covid-19 pandemic has not so far significantly affected the nature of those disputes, other changes – such as a shift to virtual hearings – are … Read more

The UK Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in Halliburton Company (Appellant) v Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd [2020] UKSC 48, which is the most significant decision on English arbitration law in nearly a decade. The Halliburton judgment is now the leading English law case on arbitrator conflicts. Importantly, the decision has clarified how apparent … Read more

In a little heralded development, the Government of India passed the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 (the “Ordinance”) on 4 November 2020 to amend the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 (the “Act”) with immediate effect. The Ordinance introduces provisions to stay the enforcement of arbitral awards tainted by fraud, and deletes certain provisions … Read more

Hong Kong’s District Court has refused to grant an injunction to restrain an arbitrator from acting in an arbitration, on the grounds that there was already another identical application before the court scheduled for hearing and that there was no urgency for granting an “interim-interim” injunction. Read more

The ICC has recently published statistics for 2019, hailing it as a “record year”. 2019 saw a total of 869 cases registered (of which 851 were under the ICC Arbitration Rules). This is the second highest number of cases registered in the ICC’s history, with only 2016 having a larger caseload (966 cases). The statistics … Read more

The SCC Arbitration Institute was at the forefront of the development of emergency arbitration proceedings, which now constitute a permanent part of the international arbitration landscape. The end of 2019 marked a decade since the arbitral institution’s innovative rules amendment. In April this year, the SCC released a report analysing its emergency arbitration statistics, which … Read more

The English High Court recently heard an application under s24(1)(a) of the 1996 Arbitration Act (the “Act”) to remove the arbitrator agreed in the arbitration agreement, on the grounds of apparent bias. The challenge was based on the fact that the arbitrator in question had, until recently, been an employee of one of the parties … Read more

In a recent decision (available on an anonymised basis here), the English High Court (the “Court”) considered a claimant (“C”)’s claim for its costs of an application under section 24 (“s24”) of the Arbitration Act 1996 (the “Arbitration Act”) for the removal of an arbitrator (“X”) from LCIA arbitration proceedings (the “LCIA Arbitration”). X had … Read more