International Arbitration

Energy and Infrastructure disputes focus

Mishcon de Reya has a wealth of experience acting on complex and high-value disputes in the energy sector, representing clients across the oil & gas, renewables, and power sectors. We have acted in disputes relating to offshore windfarms, solar projects, and power stations, combining an understanding of the technical issues that arise in large-scale projects with the advocacy experience to best protect our clients' position. In the oil & gas sector, our lawyers have a deep understanding of the business and operations side of the industry.

Our expertise extends to disputes across the value chain, encompassing upstream, midstream, and downstream disputes relating to all aspects of the industry, such as PSCs and JOAs, energy services and contracting, offshore construction, oil trading, gas supply contracts, LNG sales contracts, pipeline disputes, royalties, pre-emption rights, accounting issues, and sale and purchase/M&A disputes. Lawyers in our international arbitration team are members of the Energy Arbitration Club and other energy-focussed organisations.

Tech and IT Projects focus

Our Projects team has significant experience in assisting clients with resolving complex and business critical project disputes.

Leveraging our sector-specific industry knowledge and expertise allows us to better understand the risks, technical, regulatory and commercial aspects of projects across a range of sectors. Our experts are able to offer legal support through the entire lifecycle of large, complex IT and construction or infrastructure projects, many of which have arbitration dispute resolution mechanisms. 

As a result, we are well-equipped to assist clients in dealing with and avoiding arbitration in large project disputes, as well as implementing solutions to allow projects to continue even where relationships fray or break down.

Construction Arbitration

Construction Arbitrations require specific understanding of the technical background to your project, and the intricacies of both construction and arbitration law. Our Construction team draws on its considerable experience of advising on construction projects all over the globe to provide advice which goes beyond the basic legal position. Instead, we advise on the interaction between the law, the commercial background and the technical position to give you robust strategic advice to achieve your objectives for the project.  

We have considerable experience of all aspects of construction disputes and have been involved in numerous arbitrations concerning issues such as defective works, extensions of time, contractor insolvency, variations and loss and expense. We offer advise during the construction phase of a project to help you keep the project on track, avoid issues escalating and to put you in the best position should a dispute be unavoidable. After completion of the project, we can assist with negations on final payments and the rectification of defects. In all cases, we put your commercial objectives at the centre of our strategy to achieve the best outcome for your business.

Private Wealth Arbitrations

For our high-net-worth families and family business clients, the use of arbitration can often be preferable to litigation.

The increased use of family charters, robust shareholder agreements and transparent succession planning should serve to reduce the likelihood of issues arising – but if they do, arbitration is fast becoming a strong contender as the dispute resolution mechanism of choice for our high net family and family office clients.

These private clients appreciate the confidential nature of arbitration, our in-house arbitration expertise, coupled with the flexibility that arbitration brings to complex family and trust structures. Our team of private commercial disputes lawyers specialise in arbitrations for private clients. For obvious reasons, these disputes are discrete, confidential and private.

Arbitration Injunctions, Asset Tracing and Award Enforcement

Even before arbitration is commenced, potential claimants must investigate the asset position of their intended defendants, and whether steps are necessary to preserve the defendant's assets, so they are available for enforcement at the end of the proceedings. This step (ideally taken before a defendant is on notice of any proceedings) is critical for assessing the commercial viability of any claim and safeguarding your future recoveries.

Our Asset Tracing and Enforcement team is well-placed to assist you in conducting those assessments. Its lawyers (drawn from Mishcon de Reya's renowned Asset Tracing and Civil Fraud groups) are part of the biggest team of international injunction specialists in the UK. We regularly obtain a variety of injunctions in support of arbitration proceedings. These court orders can include, worldwide freezing injunctions (which can be obtained before, during or after an arbitration - to prevent a defendant from dissipating their assets), search and computer imaging orders (to compel access to premises and seize documents or electronic evidence for use in the proceedings), and third-party disclosure orders (to force parties outside the arbitration to provide relevant information and documents). We are adept at navigating the complexities of obtaining these injunctions without notice to the defendants and at very short notice, often when new information comes to light which suggests that assets or evidence are at risk of being concealed, placed beyond our clients' reach or, in the case of evidence, destroyed.

Once you have won your arbitration and are seeking to enforce your award against the defendant, our Asset Tracing and Enforcement team will devise and implement a suitable multijurisdictional enforcement strategy. We routinely work closely with foreign asset recovery lawyers, trusted investigators (including our in-house Cyber Risk and Complex Investigations team), forensic accountants, insolvency practitioners and other experts to uncover and enforce against assets hidden or dispersed across multiple jurisdictions.

Mishcon de Reya is also a founder member of the International Fraud Group (IFG), a network of asset-tracing and enforcement specialists operating in over 55 jurisdictions globally. The IFG network allows us to work with trusted lawyers who have local knowledge to take quick steps in preserving or freezing assets globally, ensuring your interests are protected from the outset, and in some cases before the dispute even starts.

Challenges to arbitration awards

Our multi-award-winning team has cross-jurisdictional experience before Courts and international Tribunals.  We have achieved significant results both in successfully challenging arbitral awards and resisting arbitral award challenges. We’re regularly instructed by lawyers in other jurisdictions who represented parties in English-seated arbitration proceedings, and now wish to instruct English lawyers to advance, or to resist, a challenge to their award in the English Court. 

We recently acted for the Federal Republic of Nigeria in its successful challenge to overturn the colossal US$11 billion arbitral award made against it. In order to do so, in September 2020 we secured an “unprecedented” extension to bring a challenge to the arbitral award on behalf of Nigeria, more three years later than the 28 days normally allowed.  In the landmark P&ID v Nigeria judgment, the Court commended our "expertise and tenacity" which “made the difference in getting to the facts”. Our expert team has won several awards following the judgment, including Most Important Decision at the 2024 GAR Awards, The Lawyer's Litigation Team of the Year 2024 and the FT's Innovative Lawyer Dispute Resolution Team of the Year 2024.  

We also secured victory for our clients, Diag Human SE and its owner Mr Josef Stava, in successfully defending the Czech Republic’s attempt to challenge a US$750m investment treaty award in favour of our clients at first instance (having also successfully acted in the underlying arbitration itself), and continue to robustly defend against the Czech Republic's attempts to appeal that decision.

Investment arbitration and public international law experience

Whether you are an investor seeking to bring a claim against a foreign State, or a State seeking to defend a claim, our lawyers are well placed to represent you.

Our dedicated team of arbitration lawyers regularly advises high-net-worth individuals, corporations and States on all aspects of investment arbitrations.  Our lawyers have extensive experience representing clients in arbitrations brought under bilateral and multilateral investment treaties, as well as under investment contracts with States and State-owned entities.  Our experience covers proceedings governed by all major arbitral rules including the ICSID, UNCITRAL, ICC, LCIA and Swiss rules.   

We tailor our approach and strategy to the individual needs of our clients.  What sets us apart is that we are not afraid to think outside the box to deliver results for our clients.  As such, we are frequently instructed on matters that raise novel issues. 

Where specialist technical experience is required, we have access to lawyers with in-depth sector and industry knowledge that we can draw on.  We also often work with colleagues from the reputation management, fraud and asset tracing teams to provide a holistic service that protects our clients' interests.

In addition to our contentious experience, we also have significant advisory experience, advising on investment treaty protections and on intricate issues of public international law, including treaty interpretation and negotiations.  

Representative experience:

• Acting for Belgium in a US$100 million dispute under the UAE-Belgium BIT over a 40-year concession to operate container terminals in the Port of Antwerp (ICSID Case No. ARB/17/21).  
• Acting for BSG Resources in a US$5 billion ICSID claim against the Republic of Guinea over the withdrawal of a series of iron ore mining licences under local investment law (ICSID Case No. ARB/14/22).
• Acting for RSM Production Corporation in a US$500 million dispute with Saint Lucia over the expropriation of offshore oil concessions in a contractual arbitration (ICSID Case No. ARB/12/10).
• Acting for the investors in a US$750 million dispute under the Swiss-Czech Republic BIT over the expropriation of the investor's biopharma business administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, including successfully defending the award at set-aside proceedings before the English Court.
• Acting for an investor in a US$750 million dispute arising under an investment contract with an East African State.
• Acting for the claimant in a US$100 million dispute under a commercial contract with a Central African State over the construction and operation of land border facilities.
• Acting for the claimant in a US$150 million dispute under the Slovenia-North Macedonia BIT over the failed acquisition of a lead and zinc mine administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
• Acting for a Singaporean investor in an ad hoc arbitration against the People's Republic of China in relation to the expropriation of land.
• Acting for an investor in a US$100 million dispute against a Central African State over the expropriation of a diamond mine.
• Advising an interested party to ICJ and ECHR interstate proceedings, including issues of consular access and applications before international mechanisms including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.