Institutional Involvement and Costs - Ten Years of Swiss Rules of International Arbitration - ASA Special Series No. 44

Author(s):

Joya Raha

Page Count:

10 pages

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1 PDF Download

Published:

October, 2014

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1. INTRODUCTION

Thank you Ignacio de Castro for the introduction and thank you

Michael Fischer for this wonderful exposition on how we handle cases

in the Secretariat.1

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be here.

I have been asked to address the topic of costs and, specifically, to give

a brief overview of the costs of an arbitration in a Swiss Rules2

proceeding. To do this I will illustrate the Institution’s3 role in three

different phases of an arbitration where questions of costs are

frequently raised: the advance on costs, the advance payment of

arbitrator fees and reimbursement of expenses, and the approval of the

costs at the end of the proceedings.

While the question of costs seems to be well documented, I have

also read that the subject of costs in an arbitration is not always given

the prominence it deserves, especially from a commercial perspective,

for clients that have large sums of money on the line. I hope that this

brief overview will give you some beneficial insight with respect at

least to the Institution’s role in arbitration costs. For the practitioners

in this room who are very familiar with the nuts and bolts of the Swiss

Rules, please excuse some of the basic information that I will present

but I believe it is important to review for those who are not as familiar

with our little red book.

2. REFRESHER

2.1 Costs (Art. 38 (a) to (g) Swiss Rules)

First, as a refresher, the costs in a Swiss Rules arbitration are

comprised of: