This chapter was in progress when the Yukos Awards were handed down on 18 July 2014. It is very early days to provide meaningful comment on the tenor and impact of the Yukos cases, aside from noting the numerical hyperboles associated with the Awards themselves, both in terms of pages of documents, size of the record and sums awarded:

 

By any standard, and as will be seen, these have been mammoth arbitrations. At the highest, Claimants are claiming damages from Respondent of “no less than US$ 114.174 billion.” Since February 2005, the Tribunal has held five procedural hearings with the Parties and issued 18 procedural orders. In the fall of 2008, the Tribunal held a ten-day hearing on jurisdiction and admissibility in The Hague and, in November 2009, issued three Interim Awards, each over 200 pages. A twenty-one day Hearing on the Merits (or “Hearing”) took place in The Hague from 10 October to 9 November 2012. The written submissions of the Parties span more than 4,000 pages and the transcripts of the hearings more than 2,700 pages. Over 8,800 exhibits have been filed with the Tribunal.

 

In the event, the Tribunals issued Awards of over 600 pages, granted the Claimants over USD 50 billion damages (roughly half the sums claimed), arbitration costs of Euros 4.2 million and legal costs in excess of USD 60 million. “The Russian business daily RBK calculated that $50 billion was equal to 13% of state budget revenue for 2014, or 58.2m average Russian salaries, 162m monthly pension allotments, or 14,000 T-90 tanks.”