International Finance

Third-party litigation funding (TPF) is a rapidly expanding industry composed of speculative investors who finance legal claims in exchange for influence over case management and a contingency in the recovery.[1] The potentially high damage awards (recently averaging $500 million per dispute) characteristic of investor-state arbitration (ISDS) under the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) regime[2] have made it a new and highly attractive market for TPF.

On August 2, 2018, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Secretariat released its "Proposals for Amendments of the ICSID Rules" (Proposals).[1]

On March 6, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its judgment in Slovak Republic v. Achmea BV,[1] concluding that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)[2] precluded a provision in a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between two member states of the Europe Union (EU) authorizing investor-state arbitration.

The first automatic exchanges of tax information took place in September 2017 and implementation will continue through 2018 based on Common Reporting Standards (CRS) among 102 countries and jurisdictions through the framework of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (Forum).[1] The automatic exchange of information (AEOI) allows tax authorities to receive financial account information about their taxpayers from foreign authorities without having to send a specific request.