Three panels at the Vienna Arbitration Days focused on the overlap of international arbitration and European Law and ways that the framework for arbitration in Europe should be developed. Alfred Siwy, an attorney at Schoenherr in Vienna, reports.

Matthew Weiniger and Jennifer Hartzler, partner and associate at Herbert Smith in London, reflect on an ICSID tribunal's split decision regarding the role of investor consent in deciding whether to arbitrate a host state's related counterclaim.

Representatives of five young practitioners’ groups debated current issues in international commercial and investor-state arbitration before a mixed-age audience in San Francisco. Thomas Walsh, an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and the chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration’s Young Arbitrator Initiative, reports.

A Japanese court has set aside an arbitral award for the first time under the country’s 2004 Arbitration Act. Nicholas Lingard, a Japanese-speaking associate in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s New York office, and Akiko Yamakawa, senior counsel in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Tokyo office, report.

Two recent Russian court rulings help determine whether "corporate disputes" can be resolved by arbitral tribunals under Russian law. Timur Aitkulov and Julia Popelysheva, partner and senior associate at Clifford Chance in Moscow, report.

Barrie Sander, of Herbert Smith in London, considers Venezuela's recent withdrawal from the ICSID Convention, analysing the different schools of thought on its legal implications.

Calliope Sudborough, deputy manager at the ICC International Centre for ADR, and Ben Moss, deputy counsel at the ICC International Court of Arbitration, report on the ICC's third international mediation conference in Paris, which explored the challenges users and their counsel face.

As China ushered in the Year of the Dragon, the HK45 young practitioners group looked back at the Year of the Rabbit and some of the key arbitration-related decisions of the Hong Kong courts. Ula Cartwright-Finch, an associate at Herbert Smith in Hong Kong, reports.

David Bateson, a partner at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Hong Kong, reports on the latest Kaplan lecture, in which UK appeal court judge Lord Justice Bernard Rix found inspiration in an Oscar Wilde quote on the nature of “truth”.

Albert Monichino SC, a senior counsel and arbitrator at List A Barristers in Melbourne, considers a recent decision of the High Court of Australia that tackled conflicting case law on the standard of reasons required of an arbitrator in a domestic arbitration context (with potential impact on the Model Law scheme).

Mark Kantor, an independent arbitrator in Washington, DC, says the just-published award in ExxonMobil's ICC dispute with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA shows a remarkable disparity in what the two sides paid in experts' fees.