London Counsel Juan Carlos Boue Wrote an Article entitled “Lying with numbers’ in international arbitration against states”

London Counsel Juan Carlos Boue Wrote an Article entitled “Lying with numbers’ in international arbitration against states” published in Oxford University press.

The article explains how recent international arbitration cases, especially P&ID v Nigeria, have highlighted how easy it is for claimants—whether in treaty-based Investor–State Dispute Settlement or commercial arbitration—to advance immense claims grounded on essentially no evidence against state respondents. This largely reflects the readiness of many quantum experts to engage in the practice which Martin Wachs called ‘lying with numbers’ in order to misrepresent the execution risks of speculative unbuilt projects in a manner that is radically at odds with empirical data regarding such execution risks, which is exacerbated by the ignorance of many arbitrators about business economics and discounted cash flow valuation.

This situation is unlikely to improve, and overall standards of candour in valuation in international arbitration will keep going down as the system will keep rewarding the act of cloaking advocacy in the guise of scientific or technical rationality in order to ‘lie with numbers’.

The full article is available here.