Securities Litigation in Germany: Volkswagen and The Fall-out of Dieselgate

Landgericht BraunschweigOn the blog, we have tracked the jurisdictional journey of securities litigation brought against Porsche in relation to its failed attempt to take over Volkswagen (see here and here, for example). Now, Volkswagen itself is at the centre of the most recent wave of big-time securities litigation. Investors are suing VW for failure to inform markets on time about the diesel emissions scandal, also known as Dieselgate. Jurisdictionally, things are pretty straightforward this time. The competent court, the Braunschweig District Court (Landgericht) issued a press release earlier this week on the current scope of the litigation. Continue reading

DIS40: Art and Dispute Resolution, Berlin, September 27, 2016

dis-logoThe German Institution for Arbitration’s Autumn Conference is coming up soon, on September 28, 2016, in Berlin. DIS 40, the German Young Arbitrators’ Club for those under 40 or prepared to lie about their age, is hosting its event the day before, on Art and Dispute Resolution. Continue reading

ICC Arbitrator Appointments: A First Look At The Data

ICC Court of Arbitration LogoAs reported here earlier, in January 2016, the ICC Court announced that it would start to publish the names of arbitrators serving in ICC administered cases.

When the first six names and the corresponding information were released in June 2016, the snapshot of arbitrator appointment at the time was surprisingly young, and surprisingly female: At that point in time, six sole arbitrators had been appointed, three of them were women. Looking at the biographies on the website of the arbitrators, the majority – both male and female – of them struck me as young (at least by the standards of the arbitration community, and using graduation and bar admittance dates as proxies for age). Continue reading