 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much for the organizers and who have sent the invitation to participate in this event every year. I try to participate at Cambridge Arbitration Day because I think it's a it's a very different event from the rest of the conference that they're already in London. I like the diversity of the participants, the diversity of the speakers, the topics, and this year specifically, I'm sure many of you were interested in the social aspect of arbitration. So thanks to Sylvia for giving a good introduction to my topic, actually. And I'm also going to be speaking a little bit more about what you said. But my question was, so I heard about that challenge. So you are in your office, you have to appoint an arbitrator and everyone's here looking for all the information that Sylvia told you about. And then you realize that, oh, actually, this arbitration has been challenged. And so what, first of all, let me just define the question here. I'm going to be speaking about what is the impact of a challenge to an arbitrator, but also a challenge to an arbitrator's decisions, two different things, first of all, on the reputation of an arbitrator, right? So what do we mean by reputation of an arbitrator? Well, let's go back to what has been defined by scholars and authors in sociology. Reputation is, I generally accepted upon collective perception, collective perception, of an individual by some group or others influenced by individual actors themselves, and which does not occur instantaneously, but emerges over some period of time. So that's fair, so that's in sociology. So basically all the information that Sylvia has talked about concurred towards a reputation of an arbitrator, right? And so why is this an important question today? I think it's important to pause here for a second. Well, first of all, because there has been a lot of internal criticism of arbitration, and why is that? It's because contrary to when you go to court, you choose your arbitrator, right? You pay for the service, and a lot of you have probably gone through this system before. When you pay for the service, you ask for accountability, right? So if it's free, usually you're kind of like, ah, that's it, I know. But if you pay for it, so an arbitration I think is a good example of that, if you pay for the service and you have chosen also the arbitrator, so the fact that you've chosen the arbitrator is very important. Well then, you know, you ask for accountability. And that is why there's been a lot of things recently you have heard a lot about it. Sylvia has mentioned it of a call for transparency. So all institutions have been publishing their decisions, and that I think is specifically for commercial arbitration, because an investment arbitration, a lot of it is out there already. And then we also, there's been a movement asked for reason, right? So not only to publish the challenges to decisions, a challenge of arbitration, but why, why, you know, that challenges were sustained a lot. There's also been a lot of external criticism of the system as a whole. And why do I talk about this right now? Because I think when we say arbitration is as good as an arbitrator, I would say the system as a whole is as well, and that is putting a lot of burden on our arbitrators out there, and I do think it's true. I think the whole system of arbitration as a whole depends also on the quality of the arbitrators. And in fact, if you look at the program of a lot of you who've been following this, right? So in a couple of weeks, people are meeting up in New York through the unsympathrial working group, and they're going to be addressing reform. They're going to invest a state-specific system as a whole. And three of the main issues are the consistency of decisions upon the number of arbitrators and duration of the whole amount of proceeds. And I would say that all of these three points were rolling around the quality of our arbitrators. It's not going as well, right? So let's go to my topic. So I heard about challenge. What does the data tell us? Because I can tell you what the data tells, and I can tell you when it's your experience. I think I'm going to give you both. So data, I've been looking through it, and in fact, it's not easy to find information on this. But if you look at the investment arbitration in your, you know, the published decision, it seems to suggest that the arbitrator, there are the most appointments. There's been a table that was, there's been actually a little bit of work in here. I'm not a public, you know, I haven't published this book, but this has been done by Dear Friends from the University here, the Examin book. They have a table on the most frequently appointed investment arbitrators, and it will be no surprise if I tell you the number one is Bruce Stern, the number two is Gabriel Popham, Caller number three is versus Gloria Bovina, and number four Charles Goro, right? So you can look at how many times the women have been challenged. Sorry. Well, Bridget has been challenged five times, Gabriel Popham number seven times, Charles Goro and versus Gloria Bovina just four times, right? So the number relatively doesn't tell you much, but it does show you that in fact there's still, there's not many challenges. These people have been kept appointed over the years. So what the data seems to suggest, and when we look there's actually no and this is a call for all the students out there as well. We would also welcome a program because arbitrator and diligence is great and I think there's a lot of conditions there, but there's nothing there where you can pop in the number of you know, a person and say, you've challenged how many times, right? And how many times have you been challenged in success? Well, I'm sure it's pretty possible to do that thing. And I think one of the issues is because all of you work, right? So if you're not being exclusive, I would quite like, for example, you know, anyone's name's here, I don't even get that information. So, you know, and that's what people say. In fact, it doesn't seem to be much of a link between the fact that an arbitrator has been challenged and the fact that he or she has been re-reported, re-reported by the institution. So why is there not so much of a link? And I looked into that. Well, because first of all, as I mentioned, there's not a lot of data available. Second of all, the challenges are very rare. I think I still need to insist on that point is that challenges in, you know, if you look at the data or how many decisions there are out there, and how many challenges that there have been in proceeding, they're very rare. Second of all, a lot of those challenges are not successful. Okay? So just to give, for example, just data recent of the LCI, and it published 32 challenges, right? And only a very few number of that, I think was 2 or 3 were successful. So it's like 2% of the challenges that were filed were heard. And very few of that 2% were successful. So it's very little are successful. And when there are challenges, and I think, you know, we've discussed this a little bit this morning, there are two things. It doesn't mean that if you challenge an arbitrator whether or not it's successful, and they have anything to say about their expertise specifically, right? Because it could be a very long time and that's what I'm going to speak from your perspective. I've done a lot of cases in Asia, in China, in Vietnam, and currently as I'm sure a lot of people are usually involved in this region as well. It's not systematically, but it happened a lot that when you have an award that is rendered as not in the favor of one of the parties, and that party is Chinese or Vietnamese in my experience, actually they're going to challenge their arbitrator and say there was a bias that it's not fair decision. You're really going to try to contest the decision 100%. And right now, in a case where actually the whole tribunal has been challenged before the institution or the core of the act, then a third procedure is going to go in front of the gettin' scores, right? And the uses have the other party has used to coming to the hearing. So, you know, when you hear about it's kind of slippery to say, well, I'm not going to point those arbitrators because they're not fair or a bias not really, because it seems like it is very realistic. And second of all, if you challenge some arbitrators, right, and you present some argument, they will actually either see a lack of independence of impartiality here, and the arbitrator is going to respond and say, well, no. And even if that's, you know, sorry, that challenge is not successful, oftentimes, in my experience, the arbitrator steps down or resigns also because they say, well, I created a perception that I would spot someone to step down. And I think that's important for their reputation as well, because like, I don't even want to give you a hint that I'm impartial or independent. There's no grounds for you to believe that, but I'm going to step down anyways. But I would also say that not only, you know, the fact that there's no link is, well, you know, I try to explain why, but I think that data is not confused. And again, that's called for all the people here working at the university and doing research. Because what I'm going to say is that it's actually impossible to measure the impact of a challenge on the party's refusal to point an arbitrator, right? So, yeah, sitting in my office, sometimes I'm like, hey, you want to point at Wendy once, all right? And yeah, yeah, of course. And it's almost like oh, she's challenged me. She said, oh, well, actually, you know what, not a real thing. How do you know that, right? You can't measure a negative inference, right? You can't measure that. So how would you know that the fact that, you know, Wendy in that case has been challenged and I haven't appointed her? Because I'll have data on how many appointments she's had, but it's impossible to know that because of that there's been a negative inference. Second thing, maybe I hear that she's been challenged. And I'm like, why was she challenged? I look it up, I see it, and I'm like, well, actually, that's probably exactly why if it's an issue conflict or something that's been raised, because she has previously said something or published something that is, you know, one party decided that it was going to create an appearance bias. I'm like, well, actually, this is going to help my case. I won't personally agree with that, right? So again, that's an example of when someone has to challenge, and you're, it's actually going to have a positive reaction on the opponent. The second thing I'm going to mention is that actually, in fact, what I think is so that is focused on a challenge of argumentary, a challenge is actually another thing, right? Because challenge of decisions who, as all of you know, and I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it's very difficult to, you can't really appeal, I mean, our arbitration in words of court proceedings the decision is five out of five. So you can only really challenge the decision for a really limited amount, right? There is, you know, always sections 68 and 69 of the arbitration act that has been decided where there is a possibility of appealing the decision on whether it's been gross error on a point of law. And here you can always argue, well actually, you know what, that arbitration really got wrong. You didn't open the law on fact at all, and an arbitration on someone who is using it so strongly, and that might actually happen. But again, it can really depend, like is it because it's a sole arbitrator, it's a panel, how can you decide it was because of that arbitrator and going back to what Sylvia said, I actually think that what is most important is the other kind of information, right? And this is a nice summary of what Sylvia said earlier, and this is the first one, the pre-marrying arbitration system, is that where actually do you find information are our arbitrators. Top thing is word of map. So again, we're going back to the definition of reputation, right? So word of map might include you've been trying to come up and not be challenged, but I think it's much, much more than that. In terms of colleagues, publicly available information, profile, I don't know how to say the right side of it. Second question is, what other information do users want? And this one is interesting, so of course previous awarding decisions, so right, so it's not just challenge decision, it's like the substantive, you know, points that have been made in the decision that I think is very important. The proposed percentage is the second one, decision at that point. But degree of availability, that is also very important part, is the behavior of your arbitrator. Is he going to be available? Is he going to be responsive? Is he going to be prepared? And in fact, there's an award category of R for the most prepared arbitrator, right? So it shows that it really matters for the user's degree of availability. The degree of availability I would say also includes health issues sometimes. I have had people tell me on that don't want to fill a point as a person. It's not well, you know, and I wanted to tell you that was that there has been challenges on arbitrators because we're too old, and as they have again, yes, there's place for young people out there to be arbitrators. There has been challenges on arbitrators because they found a seat to turn to, you know, to ring their or occasion, and then the... That's the foot of the lawyers. The foot of the lawyers is probably in my view, it's a very good question. It's a difficult question to answer. The reason I explain why is that I think this information is actually very interesting. Do you have access to enough information? 70% of people say, yes, we do, actually. We have enough information. Despite that, I still think there should be more of this being an transparency and more information out there. And this is just a snapshot of what Sylvia mentioned before. All the tools that we have, and they're great and I think indeed proved. That's also an interesting question. Would you like to be able to provide a assessment of arbitrators? So a troop advisor. Here we go, okay? This is arbitrator intelligence. I think it's good. I think it's a really good idea. Yes, 80% people agree with that. And then how? 80% say we should report to the arbitral institutions. They would be shifting the burden to the institutions. Because the institutions, first of all, they make recommendations also for arbitrators and then the point arbitrators directly as well. And then they would centralize that information. So I think that's a very interesting point as well. I'm just going to conclude in saying that, in fact, the original question that I'm adapting has challenged an impact on reputation. What I'm going to say is really interesting to think about has the reputation of an arbitrator an impact on the challenges that you might make on the arbitrator? Now I think that is also, I would answer with this by the positive. Oftentimes, I would think the reputation includes whether or not a person has been challenged or not, what has happened in the past. If we know for them that they're not, they have this or that specific party. For example, just to give a quick example as I was going to cite to the most appointed arbitrators, I don't think anyone in the group does not that there is tendency people in investment arbitration know that there are some arbitrators that are more friendly towards state and some others that are more friendly towards investors. And then it's always the racist standard versus strong power match going on. And in fact, you know, I think this reputation guides the appointments and also guides the challenges in the end. The other thing is, I would say is that the reputation that an arbitrator has is very important because it has a norm as an impact on arbitration as a whole. So another concrete example is the UCAS case, which a lot of people have heard of. There is an interesting point in the UCAS that actually wasn't decided at the end, was the challenge on the arbitrator because of the separatism that we use. So that was the argument of, hey, you know, we've appointed great people on the panel, the decision was rendered by court. We don't know who that person was and the role of his secretary. And it was the first time that the argument was made and then it was made again in the separate case. In the second time, they decided that, you know, I wasn't confusing at the end either. But what was important in that is that I say it has a normative effect is because now there has been guidelines that were made, that were published by the ESCA, by ESSEED and conferences that we're just talking about to, you know, have to regulate that role of secretaries in arbitration. So I do think that challenges and reputation generally have a normative effect on the self-regulation of the whole system. And I think I'm going to stop here because I think I've used all my time. There is nothing. Thank you very much. Thank you.