Foreign governments cannot rely on state immunity to contest arbitration awards against them when they had submitted to the jurisdiction of the English courts, the Supreme Court ruled today.
Spain and Zimbabwe were each the subject of multi-million pound adverse arbitration awards under the 1965 Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (the ICSID Convention). The states argued they could rely on their sovereign immunity to set aside the registration of those awards in the High Court under the Arbitration (International Investment Disputes) Act 1996.