Whereas arbitration and non-judicial dispute settlement mechanisms are of growing importance in international economic transactions, their present and future role in financial transactions is not yet fully explored. This timely publication aims to fill this gap in the literature and includes analyses of bank remedies, direct negotiation and mediation in financial and business conflicts, debt renegotiations, restructuring of syndicated loans, arbitration in project financing, and the roles of the ICC, NAFTA and OAS. Some of the expert papers focus in particular on the role of arbitration and dispute resolution in Latin America, Greater China and Russia. Non-Judicial Dispute Settlement in International Financial Transactions is based on the edited and revised papers of an international conference--part of a global series of conferences held in 1999 on the `New International Financial Architecture'--organised by the Law Centre of European and International Cooperation (R.I.Z., Cologne), the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (London), the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (Hong Kong), and the SMU Institute of International Banking and Finance (Dallas).

The first book to focus on the arbitration of international financial disputes, this work provides an invaluable reference work on issues that are particularly relevant to claims involving financial products.

The volume offers an assessment of the interactions between diplomatic and judicial means of settling international disputes in selected areas: territorial questions, international criminal law, international trade law, investment arbitration and human rights. It includes contributions from some of the world's leading academics and practitioners.

For many years it was said that the weakness of international law was the lack of a system for the enforcement of legal obligations. Commentators pointed to the paucity of cases in the International Court and the unwillingness of States to undertake binding obligations to settle their disputes. This position has now changed beyond recognition. The number of international tribunals has increased and many of them, such as ICSID and the International Court of Justice, are busier than at any time in their history. Increasingly, the classical procedures of diplomatic protection are circumvented as corporations and individuals litigate in their own right against States in international tribunals. This book surveys the range of procedures for the settlement of international disputes, whether the disputes arise between States or between States and corporations or individuals. The first part of the book examines non-judicial procedures such as negotiation, mediation, fact-finding, as well as judicial procedures. Among the tribunals covered are ICSID, the UNCC and the Iran-US Claim Tribunal, the WTO disputes panels, ad-hoc inter-State and international commercial arbitral tribunals and the International Court of Justice. In the second part of the book the emerging principles of procedural law applied in these tribunals are discussed. Here the authors go through the entire settlement process from the agreement to submit to a settlement procedure and the constitution of the tribunal, through to the determination of the law applicable to the merits and to the procedure of the tribunal, to the review, and ultimately the recognition and enforcement of tribunal awards.

The book presents international commercial courts from a comparative perspective and highlights their role in transnational adjudication.