Changes in the composition of the ICC Court

Chairmanship

At its June meeting in Stockholm, the ICC World Council elected John Beechey as the future Chairman of the International Court of Arbitration. He will take up office on 1 January 2009.

Mr Beechey has many years of experience as both arbitrator and counsel in institutional and ad hoc arbitration proceedings. Since becoming a partner with Clifford Chance in 1983, he has been responsible for developing the firm's international arbitration practice, giving it the global spread it now commands. He already has longstanding connections with ICC, as a member of ICC UK's Arbitration Group, a member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and a Council member of the ICC Institute of World Business Law.

Mr Beechey is a British citizen. He graduated in modern languages from the University of Oxford and was subsequently admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. As a highly respected member of the international legal community, he has participated in IBA working groups on the taking of evidence and independence, impartiality and disclosure in international commercial arbitration. Mr Beechey speaks English, French and German.

The World Council also elected Carl Salans as Chairman between 1 July 2008 and 31 December 2008, pending the start of Mr Beechey's term and following the resignation of former Chairman, Pierre Tercier, who stepped down on 30 June 2008. Mr Salans has long associations with the ICC Court, of which he has been a ViceChairman for the last six years. Prior to that, he was the Court member for the USA. He is co-founder of the eponymous law firm, which during its thirty-year history has become a leading name in international arbitration with offices around the world.

Pierre Tercier has been named an Honorary Chairman of the ICC Court, in recognition of his service to ICC arbitration.

New Court members

Also at Stockholm last June, the ICC World Council appointed two new members: Mr Alexiev Assen for Bulgaria and Mr Narciso A. Cobo Roura for Cuba.

Mr Assen Alexiev is a practising lawyer with particular experience in the field of trademarks, domain names and the protection of intellectual property rights in general. He has acted as arbitrator, counsel and expert in this field. He was Secretary General of ICC Bulgaria, which was created in 2007 and is one of ICC's newest national committees.

Mr Narciso A. Cobo Roura teaches and practises law in Cuba, where he has been a member of the judiciary for many years and sits on several high-ranking legal councils and committees. These include the Cuban Society of Economic and Finance Law, of which he is chairman, and the Cuban Society of Mercantile Law. In 2001 he was decorated by the Cuban Academy of Sciences.

Expansion for the Secretariat of the Court

Secretariat set to open satellite office in Hong Kong

The Secretariat of the ICC Court will shortly begin operating out of offices in Hong Kong as well as from its headquarters in Paris. The new offices, which will open in Admiralty on the eastern side of Hong Kong's central business district, will house an entire case management team comprising counsel, assistant counsel and secretaries with the legal and linguistic skills necessary for handling cases linked to East and South Asia and Oceania. The team will be headed by Ms Cheng-Yee Khong, a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales and a Malaysian advocate and solicitor, who worked for several years in the Secretariat's Paris offices and was latterly the Court's Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. Ms Khong practised in London and Paris as well as Kuala Lumpur before rejoining the Court as its Regional Director.

The new Hong Kong office has been set up in response to a growing demand for arbitration services in the region. Parties from East and South Asia and Oceania account for over 13% of all parties in ICC arbitrations and almost 10% of ICC cases are seated in the region. The administration of cases locally will lead to greater proximity and efficiency, allowing services to be rendered and filings made in a common time zone. At the same time, the office staff will form an integral part of the Secretariat and remain in constant contact with its Paris headquarters. Direct participation in meetings in Paris will be possible through a dedicated video link.

The choice of Hong Kong as the home of the Secretariat's new offices was made after a long and careful survey. Hong Kong's central position within the region, its accessibility and sophisticated infrastructures made it an attractive candidate. Furthermore, Hong Kong has demonstrated strong support for international arbitration by enacting modern legislation incorporating the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. ICC has already enjoyed fruitful links with Hong Kong, for it was there that a regional office was created ten years ago to strengthen ICC's position in Asia. ICC Asia has since become an important driving force in the region, an impetus which will be renewed with the recent arrival of Hong Kong business leader Victor K. Fung as Chairman of ICC.

Another strong contender was Singapore. Although not chosen for the location of the Secretariat's new offices, Singapore is to be the venue of the Court's new liaison office for the region. This office, whose function will be to promote ICC arbitration in East and South Asia and the Pacific Rim, organize and coordinate conferences and training events, and respond to enquiries from local players, will be situated in a new complex dedicated to dispute resolution known as Maxwell Chambers. The complex will open in 2009.

Through its two new Asian offices, the ICC Court will be well placed to intensify its outreach in the region, building on a long list of recent successes. These have included visits by representatives of the ICC Court to Macau, Chinese Taipei, Brunei, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam and India, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore. Such visits provide opportunities for conferences, workshops and meetings with corporate counsel, members of the judiciary and government officials. The programme will continue in the coming months with a mediation workshop in Hong Kong on 17-21 November 2008, to be followed by events in Seoul and Tokyo, and culminating in the World Chambers Congress in Kuala Lumpur next June. An increasing number of ICC's training events are now recognized as giving eligibility for accreditation with local bars and law societies.

The official opening of the Secretariat's Hong Kong office will take place on 19 November 2008. A special programme of events has been organized to accompany the opening, including a seminar organized in conjunction with the Department of Justice of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. This partnership is a reflection of local support for the ICC Court's move to decentralize its services.

Paris strengthens its case management capability

An additional case management team will begin operating at the Secretariat's Paris headquarters in October 2008. The new team, comprising lawyers from Latvia, Romania and Uzbekistan, will deal above all with cases linked to Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including the Russian Federation. Ms Galina Zukova, a Latvian citizen, has been appointed as Counsel to head the team.

Ms Zukova, a lawyer and accredited mediator, has particular experience in international trade and dispute resolution. Her doctorate in law, from the European University Institute in Florence, was on the subject of free trade in goods between the European Union and its prospective new members, and she has taught on international economic law and dispute settlement, including international commercial arbitration, at the Riga Graduate School of Law and the University of Latvia. She comes to ICC from one of Latvia's leading law firms. She has worked at the European Court of Justice and at the Court of Arbitration of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Ms Zukova is a co-founder of the Society of International Economic Law, which held its inaugural conference in July 2008. In addition to Latvian, Ms Zukova speaks English, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

Dedicated hearing rooms to open in Paris

On 20 October 2008, the doors of the new ICC Hearing Centre will open, offering dedicated facilities for conducting hearings in Paris.

The Hearing Centre will fill what may seem a surprising gap in a country so renowned for arbitration. Indeed, although France has ardently supported arbitration through legislation and jurisprudence, its capital lacks practical facilities for conducting proceedings. The rooms available at ICC's International Secretariat are no longer able to meet a demand that grows day by day. In 2007, the number of cases filed with the International Court of Arbitration in which Paris was chosen as the place of arbitration exceeded 100 for the second year running. And this is only part of the caseload that comes to Paris, for the French capital is selected as the seat of many other institutional and ad hoc proceedings, too. In such circumstances, it has become necessary to use hotels for hearings. With the opening of the ICC Hearing Centre practitioners will at last have at their disposal the facilities they need for conducting hearings in optimal conditions.

The 800 m² Hearing Centre, has been specially designed to meet practitioners' needs. The ten light and tastefully decorated rooms are all equipped with soundproofing and air conditioning and contain spacious desks fitted with microphones, power and internet connections and headphones. There are also screens for TV, video and overhead projection, as well as ample shelving space. The largest rooms have interpreting booths. A system of restricted access with key cards enables rooms to be left in security whenever they are vacated during hearings lasting several days.

The size of the rooms varies from 23 m² to 110 m² and their seating capacity from 8 to 40 persons. Each of the largest rooms has adjacent smaller rooms, which can be used for break-out sessions. When booking, special packages are available for combinations of rooms.

The Hearing Centre also offers a full range of customary office services, including telephone, fax, photocopying, and technical support. On-site catering is available for tea and coffee breaks and meals. Requests for additional services of a more specialized nature are handled individually.

Although it is expected that the Hearing Centre will serve the arbitration community above all, it may also be used for other forms of dispute resolution such as mediation. Its use is not restricted to ICC proceedings, for it is open to all kinds of cases, both institutional and ad hoc.

The ICC Hearing Centre is located at 112 Avenue Kléber in Paris's16th arrondissement, adjacent to the Trocadéro underground station and close to many of the capital's law firms.

Further information, a reservation form and room hire rates are available at <www.icchearingcentre.org>.

Telephone enquiries: +33 1 49 53 33 00

Email enquiries: infohearingcentre@iccwbo.org

Successful take-off for ICC Young Arbitrators Forum

ICC's Young Arbitrators Forum (ICC YAF) was inaugurated with great success in Barcelona last June. Some 65 young arbitrators from 20 different countries gathered in the Catalonian capital for a weekend of training and social events. They were addressed by members of the ICC International Court of Arbitration and its Secretariat and leading international arbitrators during conferences and workshops, which were interspersed with opportunities for socializing and networking.

The Young Arbitrators Forum is a global group of practitioners designed to encourage exchanges between young professionals involved in dispute resolution worldwide not only through academic activities but also an exciting programme of social events. The Forum consists of five Regional Chapters, each overseen by a Regional Coordinating Committee. The Regional Chapters are in turn guided by a Global Coordinating Committee chaired by the Deputy Secretary General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, Simon Greenberg.

The idea of a worldwide ICC association of young arbitrators has grown out of an initiative within ICC's US national committee, the US Council for International Business (USCIB), which has been operating such a forum within North America for a few years. Its extension to other regions will enable a wider public to benefit from the many advantages it offers. As an illustration, the Young Arbitrators Forum has recently supported a Young Arbitrators Roundtable on the occasion of a conference in São Paulo, Brazil, organized by the Comitê Brasileiro de Arbitragem and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration of the Center for American and International Law.

Information on how to join the Young Arbitrators Forum and upcoming events is available on the ICC YAF website at <www.iccyaf.org>.

Task force to look into electronic documents in arbitration

A new task force has been created, under the auspices of the ICC Commission on Arbitration, to study the production of electronic documents in arbitration proceedings. Its precise assignment is to identify the essential features and effects of disclosing electronic documents in arbitration and compile a report and possibly make recommendations on the subject. The task force is the brainchild of the Arbitration Committee of ICC's US national committee, USCIB. Given the increasing use of electronic documents in arbitration, the USCIB Arbitration Committee believed that guidance was required on producing such documents in proceedings and protecting against abuses.

Acting on the USCIB proposal, ICC set up the Task Force on Production of Electronic Documents in Arbitration in August 2008. Some 70 members drawn from the worldwide membership of the Commission on Arbitration have joined the task force, which is chaired by Loretta Malintoppi and Robert H. Smit. Both are practising lawyers and, respectively, alternate member of the ICC Court for Italy and member of the ICC Court for the USA.