Arbitration congress set to give Edinburgh £2m boost

Edinburgh has beaten off half-a-dozen international hotspots for arbitration to host a forthcoming meeting of the world's leading authorities on resolving commercial disputes outside the courts.

The EICC will host an international arbitration congress. Picture: Steven Scott Taylor

The biennial congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) will boost the local economy by up to £2 million, with more than 1,200 delegates expected when it is held in the Scottish capital in 2020. The event will be staged at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), one of five partners leading the bid to host the event.

The ICCA congress is the world’s largest conference devoted to international arbitration, which is often the preferred route for settling disputes crossing multiple government jurisdictions.

Corporations using arbitration have the assurance of knowing that sensitive commercial information will remain private, and also avoid the risks of potentially having a case tried in the courts of a corrupt regime. This has fuelled the world-wide growth of commercial arbitration, with the ICCA congress a highly sought-after event for host cities.

Other finalists in the bid for 2020 included Copenhagen, Mexico City, Stockholm, St Petersburg, Vancouver and Vienna. Donald Donovan, president of the ICCA, congratulated the Edinburgh team for prevailing over “stiff competition”.

“After recent ICCA congresses held in Rio, Singapore and Miami, this year’s event in Mauritius, and a 2018 congress scheduled for Sydney, ICCA looks forward to bringing the congress to Europe in 2020,” he said.

“We’re confident that ICCA Edinburgh will provide a spectacular platform from which to pursue ICCA’s mission.”