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According to The Financial Times, Saudi Arabia is hoping to leverage the credibility of the justice system in the United Kingdom to attract foreign direct investment.
Saudi Arabia will lobby the UK government as early as November to set up a confidential court in London that would settle multimillion pound commercial disputes arising from the Middle Eastern kingdom.
The Saudis hope that a London-based arbitration centre would help counter investor concerns about the Saudi Arabian legal system and thus boost foreign investment into the kingdom.
Under the Saudi plans, driven by the Saudi Chambers of Commerce, former members of the judiciary and other leading UK legal figures would sit on an arbitration panel that would have final say over international disagreements. The contracts would be written under English law.
An arbitration center in London would compete with centers elsewhere in the world as a forum for resolving cross-border disputes between firms and governments. Such cooperative governance arrangements may become increasingly common as countries with reputations for effective governance export services to countries eager to leverage such credibility to attract investors and residents.
Read the full article here.