First published on the Global Arbitration Review website, 27 April 2020.
Four practitioners from different parts of the world have joined the recently launched arbitrator wing at London chambers 33 Bedford Row.
Arbitrators@33BedfordRow – which launched just over a year ago – announced that Dancia Penn OBE QC, Victor Leginsky, Susan Ahern and Nigel Edwards QC had joined on 6 April, increasing the membership of its arbitrators wing to 13.
Penn is based in the British Virgin Islands and is a former Attorney General of the overseas territory. She has acted as a Justice of Appeal on the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and was recently appointed as a judge of the newly created Caribbean Community Administrative Tribunal.
She has experience as counsel and arbitrator in disputes including in the financial services and insolvency sectors. She co-founded BVI chambers Caribbean Arbitrators and is on the panel of arbitrators at the BVI International Arbitration Centre.
Leginsky, a Canadian national, has been practising in the Middle East for over 13 years and has sat as arbitrator in over 100 cases, including construction, oil and gas and energy disputes.
In 2010, he was on the Dubai International Arbitration Centre tribunal that ordered a subsidiary of government-owned real estate developer Nakheel Properties – the creator of the Palm Island among other developments – to pay an investor in the nearby Jumeirah Island project more than US$750,000 in damages.
Leginsky is a regional pathway leader for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators tutoring arbitral award writing. He is qualified as a barrister and solicitor member in British Columbia.
Ahern is an Irish-qualified barrister. She is listed as an arbitrator at ICSID and at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and hears sports, commercial and insurance cases.
She is a committee member for Arbitration Ireland and was head of legal for the World Rugby governing body for seven years.
Nigel Edwards QC, an English barrister, has also joined 33 Bedford Row as a mediator member.
Tariq Mahmood, chair of Arbitrators@33BedfordRow, says: “We are delighted to have been joined by these four highly qualified and talented arbitrators and mediators from four different parts of the world.”
Mahmood, who is dual-qualified in England and Pakistan, was appointed head of the arbitrator wing in July last year at the same time as Ramakrishnan Viraraghavan SC, Hammad Baig, Maurice O’Carroll became members.
The other existing members of Arbitrators@33BedfordRow are Canadian and former BVI Commercial Court judge Barry Leon, Australian academic Tony Cole, US arbitrator Katherine Simpson and Irish barristers Dermot Flanagan SC and Arran Dowling-Hussey.
The article can be read on Global Arbitration Review website (with subscription), here.
For further information, please contact Senior Civil and Commercial Clerk, Mark Byrne on 0207 242 6476; direct line: 0207 421 5568; mobile: 07985 615 215 / 07931 231 321; email: m.byrne@33bedfordrow.co.uk