Leading Arbitration Institutions in Moscow

Conference “International Arbitration in the Spotlight: from Tokyo to New York” was successfully conducted on March 20, 2017.

The conference was organized by LF Academy and the Arbitration Center under the auspices of Saint-Petersburg International Legal Forum and was hosted in a historic building of “Business Russia”. More than 80 participants (including Russian and foreign lawyers, businessmen and scholars) attended the conference. The participants discussed the most important recent tendencies in international arbitration.

During the first session the new arbitration rules of the wide diversity of arbitration institutions (VIAC, LCIA, SIAC, DIS, HKIAC, ICC, ICAC and the Arbitration Center at ANO “Institute of Modern Arbitration”) were analyzed. The representatives of the institutions described the challenges they faced while revising their rules and a hard choice between flexibility and institutionalization. Manfred Haider (Secretary General of VIAC), Tatiana Menshenina (Partner at Withersworldwide), James Menz (Vice Secretary General of DIS), Lord (Peter) Goldsmith (Vice-President of HKIAC, Co-managing Partner and Head of Dispute Resolution Practice in Europe and Asia at Debevoise & Plimpton), Maciej Jamka (President of ICC in Poland) and Alexei Kostin (President of ICAC) participated in the session that was moderated by Akira Kawamura (President of Japan Association of Arbitrators).

The special mini-session was devoted to investment arbitration, where Brigitte Stern (International Arbitrator, Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris I) and Nikita Kondrashov (Associate at Luther Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH) thought through the differences between international commercial and investment arbitration.

During the second session the arbitrability of corporate disputes in different jurisdictions as well as the first rules on arbitration of corporate disputes in Russia (the ICAC’s rules and the Arbitration Center’s rules) were analyzed by Dirk van Gerven (Partner at NautaDutilh), Gerard Meijer (Partner at NautaDutilh) and Anton Asoskov (Member of the Presidium and Head of the Nominating Committee for Corporate Disputes at ICAC). Olesya Petrol (Assistant Professor at Russian School of Private Law) discussed the temporal application of arbitration rules while Tatiana Polevshchikova (International Case Counsel at Kuala Lumpur Regional Center for Arbitration) described the activities of KLRCA. The special talk about parallel proceedings in arbitration and local courts was given by Sophie Lamb (Head of Dispute Resolution Practice at Latham&Watkins LLP). The session was honored to be moderated by Lord (Peter) Goldsmith (Co-managing Partner and Head of Dispute Resolution Practice in Europe and Asia at Debevoise & Plimpton).

During the third session Ruslan Ibragimov (Board Member – Vice-President for Corporate and Legal Affairs, MTS PJSC), Valeriy Sidnev (Legal Affairs Director, JSC “MCC “EuroChem”) and Timur Valiev (Deputy Director General for Legal Affairs, En+) answered the questions posed by Anna Grishchenkova (Partner at KIAP) and Andrey Gorlenko (Executive Administrator at the Arbitration Center at ANO “ISA”). They wondered how business representatives evaluate the first results of the arbitration reform, which arbitrators are mostly needed and which steps should be taken in order to make Russian arbitration institutions more attractive to Russian companies. The audience answered the questions together with speakers by means of interactive voting.

At the end of the conference the participants enjoyed the cocktails offered by Latham&Watkins Law Firm and continued discussing the issues raised during the conference.

Photos made during the conference can be found here.