Record year for arbitration cases registered with ICSID

The record number of new arbitration cases registered with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in 2020 highlights the confidence that investors retain in resolving their disputes with states and state sponsored companies through arbitration, an expert has said.

According to ICSID, which is part of the World Bank and deals in international investment dispute resolution and conciliation, there were 58 new cases registered with it last year, up from the previous record high of 56 in 2018 and the 39 recorded in 2019. The number of cases registered with ICSID has typically been rising since the late 1990s.

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ICSID releases statistics for record year 2020

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 likely to affect investment arbitration in 2021 and beyond.

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Litigation Funding: Third-party funding in international arbitration

While international arbitration spans multiple types of claims, overlapping jurisdictions and legal regimes, there are some commonalities to consider it an appropriate subject for a brief addendum within this guidebook’s framework. A practitioner considering a transaction involving third-party funding of international arbitration will need to consider multiple potentially relevant jurisdictions. For example, one might need to consider the applicable arbitral rules (if any), the law of the seat of the arbitration, the governing law of the underlying agreements, any applicable international treaties, the law of the jurisdiction in which the award will be enforced, and, potentially, the law of the parties’ counsels’ home jurisdictions. Accordingly, this addendum is necessarily limited and endeavours to highlight some of the issues and approaches that are common in the context of third-party funding and international arbitration.

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2020 survey of TMT sector investor-state arbitration

Technology, media, and telecommunications (“TMT”) as an overarching sector has experienced sustained growth and turmoil for a number of years characterised by cross-border collaboration, expansion, consolidation and, of course, innovation. The sector (and in particular the telecommunications sector) remains a focus for direct investment and capital demands for the underlying infrastructure such as full fibre networks, 5G networks, data centres, mobile towers and subsea cables – driven by the ever-increasing demand for data both at a consumer and enterprise level – remain high. Against this background, we continue to see investor-state disputes arise and develop into arbitrations. This article aims to consider any new trends in this area, and to offer some thoughts on the potential implications for investors and states.

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