Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law - Volume 10

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DR. SABAHI:  This session’s keynote speaker is Professor Mark Kantor.  I have the great pleasure and honor to introduce him.  And we were talking with my colleagues, and I volunteered in a way for it.   

Mark’s bio, a very short one, is in the program.  I urge you to look at his full bio on the Internet at Mark Kantor.com.  His bio is very long.  He has done a variety of things, and he asked me to keep it very short, so I refer you to that.  But, for the record, let me tell you some of the highlights as I have known him.  

During the past 15 years that I have known him, I myself having been his student at Georgetown.  I started to know him.  It was in 2001.  I was taking a course on international business transactions.  It was one of the best courses that I had gotten, and I noticed the man is so rigorous and very demanding in his grading, but I got a passing grade.  I got a passing grade, but, I mean, the experience was so good that later on, when I was doing my SJD I decided “I really need him, although it’s kind of a little bit risky.  I might get a bad grade, but I just need it.”  So, I went back, and it was a terrific experience.

That is my personal side of this story, but Mark doesn’t really need an introduction.  He has been for many years contributing to this community.  He has been a moderator of OGEMID.  Currently, he’s Editor in Chief of TDM.  And all of us  I’m sure you have seen, he is detailed and has very interesting comments, which has been nurturing all of our thinking, and he has done a lot of other scholarly works.  His book on valuation for arbitrators, of course, is very well known.  We have a number of valuation experts in the room, so I’m sure they have looked at it.  

Mark also these days serves as an independent arbitrator.  He has served on a number of international commercial arbitrations and investment treaty arbitration tribunals, and he is listed in a number of rosters  AAA, LCIA, ICDR–and we are grateful to have him.  
Thank you, Mark.

MR. KANTOR:  Thank you very much, Borzu, and, in particular, thank you for not giving the kind of introduction that makes it seem like I walk on water.  It is astonishing how many speakers and panelists in our little world of international investment law, in fact, seem to walk on water.  And, by the way, you did get a good grade, as I recall.

Let me begin with something important.  This is, as we all know, the Tenth Anniversary of the Juris Conference on Investment Treaty Arbitration, and I think we owe some thanks.  We owe some thanks to Ian Laird, Borzu Sabahi, Freddy Sourgens, Todd Weiler, Mike Kitzen, Candice Dubensky, the Juris team.  Would you join me and thank them for their work.