In international arbitration, winning your case is only half the
battle. The harder part is often getting the money. Even if an
unsuccessful party has assets, gaining access to them is no sure
thing. Large companies, operating across multiple jurisdictions,
will often have assets all over the world. Winning a case in one
jurisdiction (where the losing party does not have the funds to
satisfy a judgment debt) does not guarantee that its assets in
other jurisdictions will be readily available to the victor.
Fortunately, it is generally straightforward to have an arbitral
award recognised and enforced (provided that the jurisdictions are
both signatories to the New York Convention on the Recognition and
Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958). However, parties
need to turn to other remedies to ensure there are still assets
there to recover.
