Originally from Journal of Damages in International Arbitration

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MR. WALCK: Welcome back.
This morning we had Professor Fernández Armesto start us off by setting out some thoughts on valuation, damages and compensation. We followed that with two panels to discuss valuation methods and standards of compensation, and the next panel will focus on some of the gaming and some of the posturing and incentives that occur in the arbitral practice. We hope that the panel discussions will form the raw materials with which our final panel can then build a mock debate on some of these issues.

So, with that as our context and our objective, let me first introduce our panel to you. To my near left, Michael Nolan, a partner at Milbank here in the D.C. area. Michael has a diverse litigation and arbitration experience involving work for both investors and States in the BIT practice as well as lots of commercial work in a very diverse set of industries under pretty much every Procedural Rule you can find an acronym for.

To his left, Alex de Gramont, a partner at Dechert  again, here in Washington   with both investment treaty and commercial experience all over the world under the typical procedural rules we all know and love: ICSID, ICC, ICDR, UNCITRAL, et cetera.

Third in line we have Mick Smith, partner and co founder Calunius Capital, who is experienced not only as a solicitor, but also in finance and investment banking and provides third party funding – probably to some of the clients of people in this room.

And then we have a couple of experts. We have Leonardo Giacchino, who is a partner at Solutions Economics in Bethesda. Leo is a regulatory economist with experience not only in the regulatory world, but also in privatization, damages and valuation issue, and he’s authored books on corporate finance and energy regulation.

And, finally, Geoff Senogles, all the way down at the end, a Vice President at Charles River Associates in Geneva and London. He heads CRA’s forensic accounting team, has an emphasis in international arbitration, both commercial and treaty, as well as financial investigations, and Geoff was formerly on the staff at the UN Compensation Commission.

Our panel is entitled: “Game theory: How do the incentives processes and psychology of ISDS affect damages outcomes?” And so, let’s launch into that with a little bit of discussion of gaming the system.