New York continues to be the leading venue for international arbitration in the United States and has replaced Zurich as the fifth in the world. Run under the auspices of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),  the ICC Secretariat registered 801 new cases in 2015, involving 2,283 parties. According to the ICC’s most recent statistical report, the numbers of both US and Canadian parties rose to record levels in 2015.  In the two full years since the New York office of the ICC has been operational, the numbers of parties from North America involved in ICC arbitration has risen by 30 per cent. The same period has also seen a 40 per cent rise in the number of parties from Latin America.” 

ICC cases grow

The United States as a whole achieved an important benchmark in 2015, surpassing the United Kingdom in number of new ICC cases. The US became the third most frequently chosen country for the seat of ICC arbitration, after France and Switzerland. Of the 60 new ICC cases seated in the US, the greatest number were located in New York (28 cases), with the remainder  scattered among Florida (11), California (9), Texas (6), Missouri (2), Washington DC (2), North Carolina (1) and Ohio (1).  New York thus is the scene of close to half of all ICC arbitrations in the U.S., far outranking all other U.S. Cities.

International standards

New York City also displaced Zurich to rank as the fifth most popular city for international arbitration, after Paris, London, Geneva and Singapore. New York International Arbitration Centre Chair James  Carter, Senior Counsel at WilmerHale LLP commented: 'Parties worldwide recognise the benefits of locating their international arbitrations in New York, among which are the application of international (rather than local US) standards in matters such as pre-hearing disclosure and the New York courts’ support of the arbitral process.'  NYIAC has recently launched a public database of New York court decisions on international arbitration, freely available at http://nyiac.org/case-law-library/. New York law was most frequently chosen as governing law, by a large margin, in international arbitration cases in which parties chose US laws to govern their disputes.