I’m linking here to a wonderful blog post from FOB Susan Franck about her latest article on investment treaty arbitration (ITA).  Contrary to recent press about the evils of ITA for developing countries, she has found:

The available data did not support notions that the average final ITA outcome was either in favor of investors or awarded investors multi-hundred-million-dollar awards. When comparing the outcomes of cases won by either investors (i.e., some award over US$0) or by governments (i.e., an award with a finding of US$0 liability), investors won less than 50% of disputes. Rather, for every two cases investors won, governments won roughly three cases (2:3). In the small sub-set of cases where investors did win, on average, investors were awarded less than US$50 million and roughly one-third of their claimed damages.

There’s much more about the latest findings and conferences addressing these concerns in her post.  And I much appreciate the shout-out to my own work with Nancy Welsh arguing that these types of disputes should be mediated (which I link to here.)