Third Party Funding in International Commercial Arbitration : Disclosure Challenges in Primary and Secondary Markets of Legal-Claims

Abstract: Third-party funding (TPF) has grown to be a popular phenomenon in the past two decades with a large global market (billions of USD). This success came with new complications regarding conflicts of interest that threaten the impartiality and independence of arbitrators who may have common-interests with funders. Disclosure of funding has been proposed as a solution and ordered in many cases. However, it was not always approached in systematic ways. Similar TPF cases may have inconsistent decisions. The thesis tackles disclosure in arbitrations to arrive to conclusions on whether it is needed, if all funding-information should be disclosed, and if legal-bases grant tribunals the powers to order such disclosures.  Disclosure opponents raise several objections, which are discussed in the thesis. One objection touches upon the root of many problems namely, TPF definitions. Opponents argue that available-definitions do not circumscribe many funding-models i.e., they are biased against an array of investors that should not be considered as funders. Due to the muddy waters that tribunals have been walking to decide issues on TPF-disclosure, there are inclinations to regulate disclosure. Lately, two national-legislations that include disclosure-regulations have been enforced in Hong Kong and Singapore. Few arbitral-institutions have addressed TPF disclosure (inter alia 2021 ICC Arbitration Rules). In jurisdictions and institutions without such regulations and rules, the soft-law IBA-Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration have been used but with different interpretations depending on arbitrators’ views and case-circumstances. The respective definitions do not address modern economic-realities in secondary-markets of claims. This causes dilemmas in deciding if investors in such markets are considered as funders per se. The thesis assesses TPF-disclosure in international commercial arbitration and analyses its applications in primary and secondary markets. The aim is to draw the attention to disclosure challenges in both markets, propound recommendations, and show that solving such challenges calls for: (i) revising existent-definitions to accommodate evolving funding-models, (ii) differentiating between disclosure-requirements in primary and secondary markets, and (iii) regulating TPF of arbitrations. One result is a proposed definition for ‘TPF of arbitration’ that encompasses unattended issues in existent-definitions. Other results show the need for mandatory-disclosure of funders’ identities (leaving funding-arrangements to tribunals on a case-by-case basis). Such results help to strike a balance between avoiding conflicts of interests and funders’ non-disclosure interests i.e., balancing between TPF transparency and confidentiality.