Mark Kantor, an arbitrator in Washington, DC, considers the tribunal’s reasoning in the largest ICSID award ever rendered, in favour of US oil company Occidental against Ecuador, and its refusal to look at comparable sales transactions in making its damages determination.

KC Lye and Yeo Chuan Tat, partner and associate at Norton Rose in Singapore, consider whether arbitral institutions are overreaching themselves when they include provisions in their rules empowering them to override the parties’ express agreement about the composition of the tribunal.

A recent ICSID award against Ecuador considered the weight that should be given to decisions in earlier investment cases, and whether annulment decisions are more authoritative than the awards they annulled. Matthew Weiniger and Iain Maxwell of Herbert Smith Freehills report.

In a judgment late last year, Lithuania’s Supreme Court upheld an arbitration agreement in relation to a dispute over a non-compete clause, a decision which Giedre Cerniauske, an associate at LAWIN in Vilnius, says applied the country’s new law on commercial arbitration.

Rani Mina and Philippa Charles, partners in the London office of Mayer Brown, consider the complex intersection between arbitration and equality legislation in light of the UK Supreme Court decision in Jivraj v Hashwani and a proposed bill to amend the 1996 Arbitration Act – a topic that has been overshadowed by the implications of Jivraj for London-seated arbitration.

Anthony Cheah Nicholls of King & Spalding in Singapore, discusses how a recent Singapore High Court judgment arising from an arbitration between Malaysia’s Astro and Indonesia’s Lippo has defined the relationship between setting aside and resisting enforcement of arbitral awards in Singapore.

Paul Tan of Rajah & Tann and Darius Chan of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer report on the former Singaporean Attorney General’s first arbitration-related judgment as an appeal court judge.

On 6 September, the Supreme Court of India pronounced its much-awaited verdict in the case of Bharat Aluminium v Kaiser Aluminium Technical Services – or Balco – and overruled two unhelpful judgments that were hindering Indian arbitration. Dipen Sabharwal and Aditya Singh of White & Case consider the judgment and what should happen next

The Singapore High Court recently dismissed an application to set aside an interim anti-suit injunction granted by an arbitral tribunal, showing the judiciary’s robust commitment to the efficiency of the arbitral process and non-interventionist stance. Darius Chan of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer reports on the decision, in PT Pukuafu Indah v Newmont Indonesia Limited.

Peter Gad Naschitz, Helen Raziel and Shay Tzfoni, of Naschitz Brandes in Tel Aviv, report on nearly a decade of litigation concerning whether a case between Israeli and Singaporean companies should be conducted in the Israeli courts or through SIAC arbitration, and on the jurisdiction and power of the Israeli courts to stay proceedings in favour of arbitration.