As reported several months ago – and confirmed last week – the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has a new Secretary-General. Meg Kinnear comes to the post after working for nearly two and a half decades as a lawyer for the Canadian Government. Of that time, the last decade has been spent…
I spent yesterday afternoon with a group of Latin American business journalists at Columbia University as part of an ongoing training program for developing country journalists. After an hour of sharing my geek-like interest in tracking obscure international business arbitrations, we spent some time talking about reporting methods. One topic of particular interest was the…
As someone who straddles the worlds of specialized and mainstream media, I can appreciate how difficult it is to report on international arbitration for different audiences. It’s much easier writing for readers who are familiar with investment treaties, and the concept of investor-state arbitration – not to mention the alphabet soup of acronyms which abound…
This month, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is hosting a roundtable discussion on the global financial crisis and international investment arbitration. By many accounts, the present global economic nosedive seems to be giving rise to an up-tick in some forms of international arbitration and litigation. Financial institutions are suing one another…
What exactly is a foreign investor? To the layperson, it may seem self-evident: a national of one country who invests in another country. But in an era when foreign investors often enjoy much more favourable legal and financial benefits than their domestic counterparts, it seems that everyone is scrambling to be classified as a foreigner…
