Third-Party Funding of Arbitration: Focusing on Recent Legislations in Hong Kong and Singapore

As arbitration is widely used as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, third-party funding, which is a person or entity with no prior interest in the legal dispute providing non-recourse financing for one of the parties, has become more prevalent with increasing costs of international arbitration. In particular, Hong Kong and Singapore are the first jurisdictions to adopt and implement legislations to specifically permit third-party funding of international arbitration. Thus, in this article, relevant issues with respect to third-party funding of arbitration, such as, conflicts of interest, disclosure, privilege and confidentiality of information, cost allocation, security for costs, and control over arbitral proceedings by the third-party funder are examined with pertinent provisions of the recent legislations. While the respective legislations of Hong Kong and Singapore may not directly address every issue raised by third-party funding of arbitration, as they make it clear that such is no longer prohibited by the old common law doctrines of champerty and maintenance, they have clarified conflicting case law as well as proactively promoted themselves as leading seats of international arbitration.