Qatar Financial Centre-seated arbitration open to global businesses

Doha-based Richard Ashmore of Pinsent Masons provided the view after the Court of First Instance of the Qatar Financial Centre (the QFC Court) ruled that it has jurisdiction to supervise QFC-seated arbitrations where the parties to the dispute are non-QFC entities.

The seat of arbitration is something businesses determine when putting in place an arbitration agreement. It determines which courts are competent for resolving matters of arbitration law that arise in the context of the arbitration proceedings, and it has a strong bearing on how easily arbitral awards can be enforced in other jurisdictions.

The court considered the matter in a dispute involving two businesses registered and licenced to do business in Qatar, but not within the QFC – a financial centre situated within an area of Doha that has its own legal, regulatory and tax regimes. The two companies put in place an arbitration agreement under a supply of labour contract in the context of a Doha construction project.

The question for the QFC Court was whether Qatar’s arbitration law or the QFC’s arbitration regulations applied to the arbitration.

There was a degree of uncertainty over that question because of a ruling by the court earlier in 2025 in which it decided that litigating disputes in the QFC Court is an option only where at least one party to the dispute is a QFC-registered entity.

In this latest case, however, the court decided that where the QFC as the seat of the arbitration was clearly chosen in an arbitration agreement, there was nothing to prevent non-QFC entities from nominating the QFC Court as the competent court for the arbitration and that this option was expressly recognised in primary legislation.

Justice Fritz Brand said: “The primary legislative provisions of the [Qatar] 2017 Arbitration Law fit seamlessly into the Constitutional scheme by expressly bestowing jurisdiction on this Court to serve as the seat of arbitration proceedings between non-QFC entities.”

“That jurisdiction is not derived from the secondary legislation in the QFC Regulations. The QFC Regulations were in existence when the primary legislation was promulgated. In accordance with the principles of statutory interpretation, it must therefore be presumed that the primary legislature was aware of article 2 of the QFC Regulations when the 2017 Arbitration Law was promulgated. As I see it, it must therefore be accepted that when the 2017 Arbitration Law afforded non-QFC parties the option to elect the QFC Court as the Competent Court in respect of arbitration in general in Qatar, this extends to the QFC Regulations regardless of whether any or no party is a QFC entity,” the judge added.