Ukraine's investment-treaty exposure didn't pause for the invasion. It got more complicated. Background Investment treaty arbitration involving Ukraine has continued throughout the full-scale war, running on two separate tracks that are easy to conflate but legally distinct. One track consists of pre-war disputes, arising from grievances that predate February 2022, working their way through ICSID and other fora on their own long-standing procedural timelines. The other, newer

Al Habtoor Group's $1.7 billion claim against Lebanon, and what it says about arbitrating a banking crisis. Background Dubai-based Al Habtoor Group, one of the United Arab Emirates' larger diversified conglomerates with interests spanning hospitality, automotive, real estate and education, has formally filed a Request for Arbitration with ICSID against the Lebanese Republic. The claim proceeds under the UAE–Lebanon bilateral investment treaty, in force since 1999, and follows

Singapore's commercial court turns ten, and starts doing work that looks a lot like arbitration's job. Background The Singapore International Commercial Court held a conference marking its tenth anniversary in January 2025, drawing more than 420 delegates from fifteen jurisdictions. A decade in, the court's docket has moved well beyond the general cross-border commercial disputes it was originally designed to hear, into territory that overlaps increasingly with the traditiona

UNCITRAL WGIII produces a complete, dated, public drafting record going back a decade. Read as a corpus rather than as doctrine, it becomes measurable.

A stayed award, a transparency report and a caseload statistic. Each shows a gap between what investment arbitration is designed to do and what it observably does.

Orsted is majority State-owned and lost a nearly complete wind project to a regulatory order. Whether such an investor can even reach ICSID is an unsettled question.