Arbitration Highlights in the Year of the Dragon

In the year of the dragon, attention turns to the enforcement of arbitral awards. We look at five different Hong Kong decisions where enforcement or set aside has been the central issue often involving arguments of public policy. The precise status of a “re-arbitration” was considered in one; in another, a fast-moving change in the law prompted the remission of an award back to the arbitrator; an arbitrator’s lack of attention to the proceedings was enough to persuade the court to set aside the award in the third; the fourth highlighted the high threshold for a court to look at “points of law” even where the parties have agreed this in their contract; and in the fifth, a claim that an arbitral award should be struck down as it offended Hong Kong’s strict laws on third party funding, was also unsuccessful.