Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

I.    INTRODUCTION

    In June 2015, an arbitral tribunal chaired by Professor Julian Lew ordered the claimant to confirm whether its claim was being funded by a “third-party funder.” If so, the claimant was required to advise the tribunal and the respondent of the name and details of the funder and the nature of the arrangements, including whether, and to what extent, the funder would “share in any successes that the claimants could achieve in that arbitration.”  
    Whom exactly did the arbitral tribunal have in mind when making such an order? More precisely, what was envisaged with such an order? We can even go a little further and ask: with whom or what was the tribunal concerned with when making the order? We are obviously not concerned with making a reconstruction of the decision maker’s state of mind, but rather ascertaining what the possible realities of the subject matter of the order may have been. Indeed, the questions to be addressed are as such: who are the third-party funders and what is the nature of the third-party funding? Though this article will indeed address these questions soon, it may first be interesting to consider the concerns of the arbitral tribunal, which undoubtedly exist.