Stephen Anway from Squire Patton Boggs has won the Arbitration Award at The American Lawyer’s Transatlantic Legal Awards. The Transatlantic Legal Awards, created this year to highlight noteworthy lawyers and firms in transatlantic matters involving corporate, finance and litigation work, were unveiled last week at an Awards ceremony held in London.
Mr. Anway was recognized for leading a Squire Patton Boggs team, which included George von Mehren, David Alexander, Rostislav Pekar, Maria Lokajova, Tatiana Prokopova, Lenka Abelovska and Eva Cibulkova, that won a significant arbitration victory for the Slovak Republic last year. Dutch insurance company Achmea challenged the Slovak government’s plans for a public health insurance system, arguing that the new plan amounted to expropriation of its Slovak subsidiary. But the arbitration panel decided that foreign investors are not empowered to interfere in the legislative processes of a democratic nation. Not only did the arbitrators dismiss Achmea’s claims, they awarded the Slovak Republic more than $1 million in legal costs.
“These lawyers and their firms should be very proud of their achievements because the competition was stiff,” said Kim Kleman, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer, at last night’s ceremony. “Thriving transatlantic work has been key to law firm prosperity.”
Global chair of Squire Patton Boggs’ International Dispute Resolution practice, George von Mehren, commented: “I’m absolutely thrilled that Stephen and our team have been recognized for their work on this matter for the Slovak Republic; a case which involved lawyers from Bratislava, Prague, London, Columbus, Cleveland and New York, and spanned international law, EU law and Slovak law. This is the kind of case that only a few global firms are equipped to handle and it resulted in a precedent-setting decision, which we believe, made it a very worthy Award winner.”
Stephen Anway added: “Our victory in the Achmea case was truly a team effort, and each member of the team deserves significant credit for this win. This case underlines the capability and strength in depth of our platform, which was able to provide a mix of international arbitration experience, Slovak law expertise, cultural understanding and language skills in support of our client. It is a real honor to be a member of such an outstanding team.”
Squire Patton Boggs is recognized as one of the top 30 international arbitration firms in the world by leading industry journal Global Arbitration Review (GAR) in its 2015 guide. The guide cites the firm’s victory for the Slovak Republic against Achmea B.V. as a stand-out matter and it was highly commended as the “most important published decision of 2014 for jurisprudential or other reasons.”
With a team of over 90 lawyers with arbitration experience, the firm is a noted leader in bilateral investment treaty arbitrations and has participated in high-profile treaty cases including those involving energy, banking and monetary regulation, the health care sector, electrical generation and mining.
Squire Patton Boggs has represented the winning parties in three of the “20 top commercial arbitration awards” from 2001 to 2013, as ranked by The American Lawyer’s Arbitration Scorecard—more than any other law firm.