Success rates for challenges to arbitration awards remain low worldwide, underscoring a high threshold for judicial intervention, according to a Reed Smith study.
The firm’s International Arbitration Report 2025: A Multi-Jurisdictional Analysis of Challenges to Arbitration Awards, produced in collaboration with LexisNexis, examines how courts across major arbitral seats handle applications to set aside awards.
It showed that England and Wales reported the highest overall success rate (38%), while Middle Eastern jurisdictions and New York recorded the lowest, despite significant volumes. The success rate for onshore United Arab Emirates jurisdictions was 11%, while it was 8% for challenges in Bahrain and New York. There were 11 identifiable set-aside applications in the UAE’s offshore DIFC court, none of which succeeded.
Jurisdictional differences were stark. For example, public policy grounds accounted for less than 3% of challenges in England and Wales, yet they are the most frequently invoked basis in France. Courts also diverged in their approach, with some conducting detailed reviews and others adopting a light-touch stance.
Recent cases also showed increased attention to public policy issues, including allegations of corruption – such as in the P&ID litigation, which saw the High Court overturn an $11bn award against Nigeria in 2023 – and the impact of international sanctions, as reflected in the report’s underlying case dataset.
Timelines were longer than expected, according to the report: set-aside proceedings averaged more than a year across all jurisdictions, and appeals extended this further. Cost regimes also shaped behaviour – Hong Kong’s indemnity costs against unsuccessful challengers correlated with significantly fewer cases compared to Singapore, where recoveries tend to be modest relative to actual spend.
The jurisdictions with the highest volume of set-aside applications from 2018 to 2024 were Paris (222), England and Wales (178) and Bahrain (131).
The number of cases in England and Wales and Paris was unsurprising, given the importance and popularity of these seats. What was surprising was the number of set-aside instances in the Middle East: Bahrain's total of 131 applications was more than Singapore and Hong Kong combined, and the UAE onshore courts (Dubai and Abu Dhabi) saw 92, the fifth-highest total after England and Wales, Paris, Bahrain and Singapore.
This contrasts with the Queen Mary University and White & Case International Arbitration survey results: the five most preferred arbitration seats globally are London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing and Paris (in that order).
Elizabeth Farrell, a partner at Reed Smith in London and one of the authors of the report, wrote: “What is immediately obvious is England and Wales’s surprisingly high success rate in setting aside awards, at 38%. However, an analysis of the underlying figures reveals that this percentage is likely due to the high success rate (50%) of applications to set aside under Section 69 of the English Arbitration Act (AA).”
Likewise, Peter Rosher, a Paris-based partner, noted France's low success rate of 17%, despite having the highest number of set-aside cases among the seats reviewed by a wide margin.
“One possibility is the availability, under French law, for setting aside on the basis that an award is contrary to international public policy, which was the most frequently invoked ground in French setting-aside cases,” he concluded.
The report drew on hundreds of cases from England and Wales, France, Hong Kong, the Middle East, New York and Singapore, covering a six-year period. The findings were based on publicly available court decisions, which Reed Smith noted may skew success-rate data upward relative to the range of challenges available, as challenges not heard in court were not captured.
The report’s Middle East analysis focused on onshore UAE courts, the DIFC and Bahrain, and was produced in collaboration with the Bahrain Ministry of Justice; it excluded developing arbitral jurisdictions such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Timothy Cooke, managing partner of Reed Smith’s Singapore office, wrote in the foreword: “The findings contribute to a broader discussion about maintaining arbitration’s legitimacy, ensuring procedural fairness and strengthening the enforceability of awards.”
Global Legal Post publishes the Law Over Borders series of comparative law books, including one on International Arbitration, edited by Volterra Fietta partners Robert G Volterra, Gunjan Sharma and Ahmed Abdel Hakam, which covers jurisdictions included in the Reed Smith report.
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
