Who Has Benefited Financially from Investment Treaty Arbitration? An Evaluation of the Size and Wealth of Claimants

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-6-2022

Source Publication

The Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: Empirical Perspectives. Ed. Daniel Behn, Ole Kristian Fauchald, and Malcolm Langford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 394–423.

Keywords

investment; arbitration; empirical; methodology; ISDS; legitimacy; costs; financial; companies; SMEs; forum-shopping; wealth

Abstract

The legitimacy of ISDS appears to depend in part on an expectation that it benefits smaller businesses, not just large multinationals and the super-wealthy. This chapter collects data on size and wealth of the foreign investors that have brought claims and received monetary awards due to ISDS. Categories for the size and wealth of foreign investors are compared to the size of damage awards, which helps determine that the primary beneficiaries in ISDS cases have been companies with annual revenue exceeding US$1 billion and individuals with net wealth in excess of US$100 million. The main finding is that the beneficiaries of ISDS-ordered financial transfers, in the aggregate, have overwhelmingly been wealthy individual investors and large companies – and especially extra-large companies. The authors also note that the awards gained by small companies are not so different from their legal costs.

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