The London Court of International Arbitration dealt with 301 cases in 2013, over five oer cent more than were handled in 2009 at the litigation peak of the financial crisis. Cases have been rising in SIAC, the Singapore arbitration centre. It handled 160 cases in 2009, and 259 in 2013. Meanwhile, Stockholm’s arbitration centre (the SCC), saw cases fall - from 216 in 2009 to 203 last year. Pinsent Masons, which put together the analysis, believes that international arbitration is rising partly because multinationals are preferring to settle disputes with governments rather than challenging them in the courts. Professor Loukas Mistelis, the School of International Arbitration’s head at Queen Mary University of London, said: ‘As disputes are increasingly becoming more technical and complicated in areas like life sciences or telecoms, arbitrators are often technical experts or highly specialised.’ Source: Financial Times