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International Arbitration
The international nature of the firm's practice and client base has meant that we have been involved in several major international arbitrations. We have arbitration experts in all of our offices including the two principal arbitration centres in Europe, London and Paris. Our arbitration practice in Singapore is the largest of any of the off-shore firms with offices in that jurisdiction.
Watson, Farley & Williams has amassed enormous experience in managing very large, high value cases which invariably involve the interaction of different systems of law and rules of procedure. We have, for example, been acting as lead counsel in the defence of an arbitration seated in Vienna, under the Rules of Federal Economic Chamber, which concerns a multi-billion US Dollar dispute under a shareholders agreement governed by Polish law, where the German claimant has instructed a leading US arbitration firm and where the tribunal is composed of leading arbitrators from France, Switzerland and Poland.
Our expertise and success in this area is well recognised and we are recommended as one of the leading law firms for International Arbitration in Legal 500 who described us as "...one of few to be genuinely moving forward at a pace. Few outside the Magic Circle can match the range and quality of recent instructions. Acting for a Vivendi joint venture, it successfully concluded one of Europe’s largest arbitrations." In June 2005 we featured very strongly in the American Lawyer Magazine survey of the world's leading arbitrations.
We have a particular expertise in investment treaty and sovereign disputes. Recently we were instructed to defend the Government of India in what has been described as the world's largest investment treaty arbitration. The muti-billion dollar claim concerns the Dabhol electricity power station in Maharashtra which was built by a US consortium led by Enron, GE and Bechtel. The claim is brought by Mauritian subsidiaries of the US corporations under a Bi-Lateral Investment Treaty between Mauritius and India.
We have won some very significant victories in some very hard fought arbitrations and like to think that we have an arbitration "deal list" which compares with any of the major international law firms which specialise in international arbitration.
One of the factors which also distinguishes our international arbitration practice from our competitors is the range of sectors in which we have experience of arbitration. These include:
- banking and finance disputes
- power/energy disputes
- construction disputes
- offshore oil & gas disputes
- maritime disputes
- shareholder/partnership disputes
- commodity disputes
- ICT disputes
- transport disputes.
Maren Brandes, Hamburg
Steven Burkill, Bangkok
Lucien Rapp, Paris
Andrew Savage, London
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