A conference organised by the Austrian Arbitration Association on 2 December considered the increased economic activity between Austria and Turkey and the rise in business disputes this has yielded. Jarred Pinkston, of Dorda Brugger Jordis in Vienna, reports.

The Ukrainian Bar Association has launched annual "arbitration days" devoted to commercial and investment treaty arbitration, with the first event, late last year, attracting some 130 delegates from 15 countries.

Editor: Graham Coop. Published by Juris, 2011. Reviewed by Christoph Schreuer, of counsel at Wolf Theiss in Vienna

An arbitration-related court proceeding in Singapore has been held sufficiently “difficult and complex” that the instruction of an English QC is justified. Darius Chan, an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in London explains the issues the court must tackle, which resemble those aired in the UK Supreme Court case of Dallah v Pakistan.

Christian Stuerwald, the head of case assessment at Calunius Capital in London and former head of Allianz Litigation Funding’s UK office until 2009, and Mick Smith, one of the co-founders of Calunius, consider the ICSID case of Fuchs and Kardassopoulos v Georgia, a rare public example of a funded investment treaty case.

A seminar organised by CMS Cameron McKenna in Romania a day after a major investment arbitration victory for the state highlighted ways to protect foreign investment in central and eastern Europe, with an emphasis on pre-investment planning and managing the process of dispute resolution once an investment is underway. Horia Draghici, a senior associate at CMS Cameron McKenna in Romania, reports.

In his last dispatch, the president of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Doug Jones, a partner at Clayton Utz in Sydney, describes seeing his presidency to completion in Australia, Ireland and the UK.

Chief editors: Gordon Blanke & Phillip Landolt. Published by Kluwer Law International, 2011. Reviewed by Professor Andrew Guzman, Berkeley School of Law.

Jeffrey Golden and Gerard Meijer speak to Alison Ross about their plans for a new institution in The Hague to resolve high-value disputes in the financial markets, drawing on the expertise of derivatives and arbitration specialists.

Author: Christiana Fountoulakis. Published by Hart, 2011. Reviewed by Stefan Kröll, sole practitioner in Cologne.

Nikolaus Pitkowitz, founding partner and head of dispute resolution at Graf & Pitkowitz in Vienna, reports on an unpublished decision of the Commercial Court of Vienna that refused to set aside the decision of a Vienna-seated UNCITRAL tribunal in a Danish-Polish telecoms dispute.

English and Chinese perspectives on international arbitration was the theme of a recent event co-hosted in Beijing by the China Britain Law Institute, or CBLI, and the Bar Council of England and Wales. CBLI co-founder Matthew Townsend and his colleague James Rogers, both of Fulbright & Jaworski's Beijing and Hong Kong offices, report.