Market for Awards - WAMR 2014 Vol. 8, No. 4

Author(s):

Alvaro Galindo

Victoria Shannon

Mick Smith

Maxi Scherer

Page Count:

12 pages

Media Description:

1 PDF Download

Published:

February, 2015

Jurisdictions:

International

Practice Areas:

Ad hoc,

Arbitral Awards,

Types of Award

PDF579.08 KB

$40.00

Description:

Originally From World Arbitration and Mediation Review (WAMR)

Preview Page

Good afternoon. I have the honor to coordinate and moderate

this panel. As you will notice, my role will be very limited to

present our panelists and assist in driving the discussion. The

topic is “Market for Awards,” and we have three terrific

commentators for this panel today. The first one is Mick Smith.

Mick is mathematician and studied law in Cambridge University.

Mick qualified as a solicitor in 1996. Secondly, he worked in

finance in variety of investment banking roles. Mick is the author

of various recent publications including the chapter “Mechanics of

Third-Party Funding Agreements: A Funder’s Perspective”

published in the book Third-Party Funding in International

Arbitration. Mick, you have the floor.

MICK SMITH: Thank you, Alvaro. My little job here in the

time available is to tell you about who buys or finances arbitral

awards? How do they do it? And at what price might they do?

Those of you who have had the pleasure of listening to me before

will know that I never resist a temptation to throw a few numbers

at a legal audience. I am afraid today is no exception to that rule.

So there are some numbers in this presentation. But, before we

get to that, who buys awards? I have divided then into three

different types. First, the market, there are people like Calunius,

like businesses like La Francaise that are, in reality, third-party

funding businesses. I will explain a bit more about what that

means later. But we are also interested in the market for awards.

Second, are people like distressed investors, such as Elliott and

companies like Gramercy, which are pretty well known, especially

Gramercy, for having purchased several of the Argentinian

awards which they went on to settle. Third and last category is

businesses that have grown around just enforcement of trade

debt and claim debts, and there are businesses such as Omni

Bridgeway that one or two of you may already have heard about.

That is a kind of quick snapshot of who buys awards.