Introduction
On Tuesday 2 December 2025, Baker McKenzie hosted the all-female panel, “Look Back to Look Forwards with ArbitralWomen – Current Hot Topics Across the Arbitral Spectrum (and expectations for 2026)” with ArbitralWomen as part of London Arbitration Week 2025.
Kate Corby of Baker McKenzie chaired the panel and shared insights into the acute impact of geopolitical instability across the arbitration world as well as the increasing technical and documentary complexities of arbitrations. Wing Shek of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) examined the LCIA’s recent Annual Caseload Report for 2024 and identifying the progress made within the world of arbitrator appointment towards more diverse and varied appointments.
The panel comprised a variety of speakers to address the key industries outlined in the Report:
- Banking and Finance – Saima Hanif KC of 3VB;
- Energy – Elena Guillet of Vinson & Elkins;
- Construction – Joanne Prior of Kroll;
- Technology – Carinne Kamdar of Baker McKenzie, and
- Commodities – Mary Thomson of 36 Stone.
Here we outline the key takeaways for each sector, followed by key themes drawn out from the day.
Current Hot Topics Across the Five Sectors
Banking and Finance
Highly exposed to geopolitical instability, arbitrations within the banking and finance sector should expect to continue to involve both procedural and substantive challenges next year.
Procedurally speaking, European and American sanctions on Russian assets have vastly increased the number of antisuit injunctions brought before UK courts, with Russian counterparties starting proceedings in Russia despite ongoing London-seated arbitration leading to a rush of cases.
Additionally, the thorny interplay between EU and UK blocking regulations, secondary sanctions, and coming Chinese countermeasures poses more substantive challenges for arbitrators active in this sector, many disputes on which are only just going through the case management phase. At the perimeter of states’ foreign investment review and sanctions regimes, it is clear the sector can also expect to see more challenges to arbitral awards.
Energy
Similarly, projects within the energy sector face high capital costs, longer running contracts, and a reliance on licensing from state entities. Faced with shifting strategic priorities and the increased regionalisation of international relations, market volatility in the energy sector is driving disputes.
As illustrated by the arbitral proceedings surrounding players such as Venture Global in recent years, standard deal terms may not be enough for this new reality, and it is likely we will see a progression, for example, towards more bespoke LNG SPAs with tighter, metric‑based COD definitions, independent verification, clearer commissioning rights, and broader seller safe harbours with defined RPO standards.
In the resources context, the resurgence of resource nationalism will also likely result in more ESG-based counterclaims being pursued by states against parties trying to take them before investment treaty tribunals.
Construction
As our demand for power increases and increasingly complex and remote plants are required, fuelled in part by the datacentre boom, more specialist and technical design processes are being deployed. Additionally, the rise of ‘smart buildings’ is seeing technicians employed to built what would traditionally be constructed by tradespeople.
While these developments add to the, at times, eyewatering costs of construction arbitrations, they also underscore the risk of opting for underpriced representation. Instead, costs should be controlled through properly communicating the strengths and weaknesses of claims at the outset and the costs of pursuing them, as well as the outsourcing of basic tasks such as reviewing invoices.
Against this background, it is likely the construction industry will increasingly witness many disputes which are even more complex than those traditionally seen.
Technology
A massive growth area for arbitration practices across London, tech companies are increasingly seeking to have their contracts governed by arbitration clauses. While classic disputes around issues such as change in scope, delay and overspend are still common, we are seeing an increase in arbitrating contractual disputes arising out of cybersecurity incidents.
Beyond this, the market is also seeing a huge increase in IP and licencing disputes being taken to arbitral tribunals. Time will tell if AI companies can expect to regularly become the subject of arbitration proceedings, depending whether the promised efficiencies of its rollout manifest for those who have invested in these tools.
Commodities
The commodities market is now experiencing a period of overcapacity for the shipping industry, largely a result of the reaction to the supply chain crisis caused by Covid-19. This market brings with it is own causes for charterparty disputes, with those commissioning ships incentivised to repudiate contracts or to attempt to renegotiate longer term charterparties.
The amount of commodities and maritime arbitrations remains high with maritime arbitrations for the LMAA about 3,000 new appointments a year, exceeding that of LCIA, ICC, SIAC and HKIAC combined. Commodities arbitration at their respective trade associations tend to have their own internal forms of appeal.
Key Themes Across All Industries
Increasing Technical and Documentary Complexity of Arbitral Proceedings
Since the advent of email, the amount of documentation we produce as a society has increased at an exponential rate – only compounded by the change of working habits brought about through the Covid-19 pandemic and development of generative AI. The brunt of this increased documentary complexity is often only properly felt long after the files have been stored away, normally by lawyers and arbitrators when disputes arise.
Faced with a huge increase in caseload, particularly in the transport, finance, and energy sectors, arbitral institutions are seeking to cope with the challenges of increasingly complex disputes through the streamlining of their own tools. The LCIA’s recent rollout of the ‘composite request’ tool is part of this broader trend, allowing users to commence multiple arbitrations at the same time by setting out their requests in a single document – something particularly useful for disputes involving vast interconnected webs of claims such as those common in the construction and IT sectors.
(Geo)Politics is Interested in you, and your Arbitral Proceedings
Every panellist noted the acute impact recent geopolitical instability has had on their sector. As states look to their own national security and focus on regional, rather than global, diplomatic efforts, we can expect to see an uptick of investment treaty arbitrations.
Furthermore, arbitrators might expect to see geopolitical considerations seep into their proceedings in more intrusive ways. This is particularly true for the banking and finance sector, which anecdotally has seen parties ask the court to revoke antisuit injunctions they themselves previously requested in order to avoid potential expropriation in other jurisdictions.
Today’s News is Tomorrow’s Dispute
Whether they result from mass deployment of AI, state drives for energy security, or reactionary periods of shipping overcapacity, by their nature disputes can only rear their heads later – once things have started to go wrong. For arbitration practitioners, in many cases we may therefore expect to only feel the crash of today’s market waves by the time they reach the shore.
Similarly, disputes on the back of new regulatory regimes do not just start on the implementation date. With Europe and the US having continued to develop increasingly advanced and complex packages of sanctions over what is almost the last 4 years, the fallout of enforcement actions for businesses remains to be fully felt.
