Canadian company Gold Reserve and Venezuela have reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding to settle their dispute through a new joint venture agreement. In 2014, an ICSID tribunal issued an award in Gold Reserve's favour, finding that Venezuela had failed to accord fair and equitable treatment to Gold Reserve's investment. Gold Reserve has since applied for enforcement of the award in US, France and England (see Legal updates, US District Court allows Gold Reserve to enforce award against Venezuela in Washington DC, Paris Court of Appeal enforces award under ICSID Additional Facility Rules between Gold Reserve and Venezuela, and No state immunity defence to enforcement of ICSID arbitration award (English Commercial Court)).

MEP Christofer Fjellner (European People's Party Group) has posed written questions to the European Commission, seeking reassurance regarding the qualifications and experience of judges to be appointed by Vietnam to the Investment Court System under the EU/Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EUVFTA). For discussion about the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in the EUVFTA, see Legal update, European Commission releases proposed text of EU/Vietnam FTA.

In W Ltd v M SDN BHD [2016] EWHC 422 (Comm), the English Commercial Court refused the claimant's challenge to an arbitration award under section 68 of the Arbitration Act 1996, on the basis of an allegation of apparent bias based on allegations of conflict of interest as referred to in the Non-Waivable Red List within the 2014 IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration. The court found it hard to understand why the relevant situation should warrant inclusion in the Non-Waivable Red List, with the judge concluding that the present case demonstrated weaknesses in the 2014 IBA Guidelines. We will report in more detail shortly.

In DB v DLJ [2016] EWHC 324 (Fam), in an arbitration under the Family Law Arbitration Scheme, Mostyn J in the English Family Court rejected a wife's claims that the arbitral award was vitiated by a mistake or by a supervening event. Accordingly, the judge proceeded to make an order in terms of the award. For more information, see Legal update, High Court rejects claims of mistake and Barder event and makes arbitral award into an order.

In InterDigital Comm., Inc. v Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd., 15-cv-4485 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 17, 2016), the US District Court for the Southern District of New York stayed enforcement of a Paris-seated International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration award, pending determination of a set-aside action brought in the Paris Cour d'Appel. The US court granted the stay because it found no evidence that Huawei's set-aside action was intended to hinder or delay resolution, was frivolous, or was an abusive tactic to forestall the resolution of the dispute. However, because the award provided for substantial and immediate monetary relief to InterDigital, which Huawei was refusing to pay, the court directed the parties to file letter briefs addressing the amount and type of security for Huawei to post pursuant to Article VI of the New York Convention.

FINRA has published its arbitration statistics through 2016 showing an increase of 8% in new case filings for January 2016 over January 2015. In addition, the FINRA statistics show: