New international tribunal service opens for resolving financial disputes

The Panel for Recognised International Market Experts in Finance (PRIME Finance) opened for business on Monday with the "aim of facilitating dispute settlement, reducing legal uncertainty and fostering stability in the global financial markets" according to a statement on the body's website.

PRIME Finance will operate in the form of a tribunal, providing rulings on disputes about complex financial products and debt arrangements among other things, according to a report by Global Arbitration Review.

The body is based in The Hague and is composed of more than 80 individuals with shared experience in financial services, law, the judiciary, regulation and academia. The collection of expertise amounts to "the single greatest source in the world of collective knowledge and experience of documentation, law and market practice for derivatives and other complex financial products," the PRIME Finance website said. Among the experts listed is Lord Woolf of Barnes, the former Lord Chief Justice in England and Wales.

Jeffrey Golden, a professor at the London School of Economics and part of the PRIME Finance Management Board, said the service provided an alternative to resolving disputes in specific jurisdictions, according to a report by Reuters news agency on the Business Day website.

"The PRIME Finance project emerged against the backdrop of financial market crisis and legal uncertainty," Golden said, according to the report. "The amounts at stake are staggering, the legal and contractual issues are complicated, and the volume of complex product cases is increasing.

Decisions are unpredictable, too decentralised, often taken too slowly, and not always enforceable in the parties’ home jurisdictions".