Originally from Journal of Damages in International Arbitration

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MR. SEARBY: First of all, I’d like to say thank you to Professor Fernández Armesto for those excellent introductory remarks. I’m sure that a lot of what Professor Fernández Armesto covered is going to come up repeatedly during the day as we go through.

I’m in the privileged position of being the Chairman of the first panel today, which is all about valuation methods. The working title that we adopted for this panel was: “Do parties and tribunals live in the real world?” That’s probably slightly inaccurate. The more accurate question would be: “Do parties’ experts and tribunals live in the real world?” But the intention is to explore how parties actually value investments and then compare and contrast that to the outcomes that are derived when experts and tribunals get their hands on commercial questions later on in the event of a legal dispute.

Before we proceed with the substance of the issues this morning, I’d first like to take the opportunity to introduce the very distinguished panel that we have gathered here today.

Starting at the far end of the panel, Jimmy Pappas is a managing director with the forensics practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston. He advises legal counsel, management and boards of directors on financial matters related to both commercial and regulatory disputes. He’s been engaged as a damages and accounting expert in disputes both in international arbitration and U.S. courts. He holds the designation of Accredited in Business Valuation, Certified Public Accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified in Financial Forensics. 

To his left, as we proceed, Shreyas Jayasimha, who is an advocate and arbitrator and founding partner of Aarna Law, a boutique law firm based in Bangalore. Prior to setting up Aarna Law, I believe he was at AZB. Shreyas regularly advises clients in a broad range of industries from IT, the internet of things, oil and gas and aviation and construction, to name a few where the valuation of risk is particularly important.  He’s advised several start ups in transactions in the technology space, and on the dispute side has extensive experience in commercial arbitration both as counsel and arbitrator, and he’s advised and represented clients in investment arbitration as counsel. In his spare time, Shreyas teaches, publishes, and speaks regularly on dispute resolution issues, and he’s a member of the Executive Committee of the FIAA in Geneva, and the only India based representative of ICC FraudNet.