Members

FICA’s Leaders

Ben Beaumont, C.Arb (Chair)

Mr Beaumont is a man obsessed with alternative dispute resolution of whatever nature. A barrister by training, he is a chartered arbitrator and also a chartered surveyor. He sits as an arbitrator, adjudicator, dispute adjudication board member and mediator and is a member of the FIDIC President’s list of adjudicators. Mr Beaumont founded FICA in 1998 and has written extensively on arbitration matters. Over the last 20 years, Mr Beaumont has been appointed an arbitrator in more than 190 disputes both domestic and international. He has also been appointed as an adjudicator on more than 20 occasions. He has acted for parties in arbitrations in various locations including UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, France, United Kingdom and the United States. Mr Beaumont has been active in all five Working Groups of UNCITRAL, particularly Working Group VI, where he had the great honour to be appointed to an expert subgroup drafting the legislative guide to the model law on secured transactions. He also is active on various ICC working groups drafting model contracts.

Sir Michael Burton, GBE, QC (President)

Sir Michael (until 2016 Mr Justice Burton) was called to the Bar in 1970, became a QC in 1984, and was appointed a High Court Judge in 1998. Prior to his appointment, he had a busy commercial practice in the Queen’s Bench and Chancery Divisions, Commercial Court and Employment Courts, in a wide variety of fields of Law, as Counsel not only in the UK and Luxembourg, but also in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bermuda, Brunei and the United States. He was Head of Littleton Chambers from 1991 to 1998. As a High Court Judge of the Queen’s Bench Division for 18 years, he sat also in the Chancery Division and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, of which he was President from 2002 to 2005, and from 2006 regularly in the Commercial Court. Both before and since his judicial role he has been an arbitrator and mediator. He is General Editor of Civil Appeals (Sweet & Maxwell 2nd Edition). In 2010 to 2011 he was Chairman of the High Court Judges Association. He was Treasurer of Gray’s Inn in 2012 and is a Bencher. He was Chairman of the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) from April 2000 to November 2017 and was President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal until September 2018 (Vice-President 2000 to 2013). He was appointed a part-time judge of the Abu Dhabi Commercial Court in 2016. Since November 2016, he has returned to Littleton Chambers to practise as an arbitrator and mediator, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Arbitrators. He was appointed from 3 September 2017 as Chairman of the Conduct and Disciplinary Tribunal of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He is a member of the United Nations Arbitration Panel for resolving disputes with its employees. In 2019 he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE) by Her Majesty the Queen for services to the rule of law.

Dr Alan M Anderson, FCIArb (Director & Secretary)

Dr Anderson is an internationally recognized arbitrator, arbitration counsel, and trial lawyer. He also is a Fellow of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration and a member of the Centre’s Council. Dr Anderson is an International Accredited Professional Mediator with the Mainland-Hong Kong Joint Mediation Center (MHKJMC) and an international mediator with the Japan International Mediation Center-Kyoto (JIMC-Kyoto). His arbitration experience includes proceedings conducted under the auspices of the AAA, LCIA, SCC, ICC, as well as ad hoc arbitrations. Since 2015 he has represented FICA at sessions of UNCITRAL Working Groups II and III. He is a door tenant with Littleton Chambers in London and has offices also in the US.

Constantin Eschlböck, FCIArb, MDBF, CEFA (Director)

Mr Eschlböck has been with FICA since 2013. His Vienna-based firm specialises in international dispute resolution, as well as civil and criminal litigation. He is also a member of the Ethics Council of the Vienna Bar. His track record includes various appointments as an arbitrator and as party counsel in the fields of insurance, banking and M&A arbitration. In addition to being a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Mr Eschlböck is a member of the Dispute Board Federation in Geneva and is qualified as a financial analyst in Vienna. He speaks German, English and French.

Dr Timothy Lemay (Director)

Dr Lemay served for eight years as Principal Legal Officer and Head of the Legislative Branch of the International Trade Law Division / Office of Legal Affairs, the Secretariat of UNCITRAL based in Vienna. Before joining UNCITRAL in July 2009, he was Chief of the Governance, Human Security and Rule of Law Section of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), prior to which he was Chief of UNODC’s Global Programme against Money Laundering. Dr Lemay joined the UN in 1995 following a career as a lawyer in Canada in private practice. Tim is also a trained investigator and has undertaken internal investigations on behalf of international organizations. He presently is based in Vienna and is a consultant and independent legal advisor.

Dr Herman Verbist, FCIArb (Director)

Dr Verbist is an attorney at the Ghent and Brussels Bar in Belgium with Everest Attorneys. He is an accredited mediator in civil and commercial matters by the Federal Mediation Commission in Belgium. He worked as counsel at the Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris (1988-1996). He has taught, as visitor professor, the course on international commercial arbitration at the University of Ghent (1996-2013). Since 2016, he is president of the arbitrators of the Belgian Court of Arbitration for Sport. For many years he attended the sessions of UNCITRAL Working Group II. Dr Verbist presently is a member of the Belgian delegation for UNCITRAL Working Group III.

Dr Rumiana Yotova (Director)

Dr Yotova is Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Gonville and Caius College, and an Affiliated Lecturer with the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. She also is a fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, a member of the Centre for European Legal Studies, the Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences, and a Visiting Professor at McGill University. She practices as an Academic Door Tenant at Thomas More Chambers where she advises on matters of international law and investment arbitration.

Robert Ashdown (Director)

Mr Ashdown is a Chartered Accountant, Registered Auditor and Chartered Tax Adviser who holds degrees in economics, law, and an MBA from INSEAD (with distinction). He has worked not only in the UK but also in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and India.

Dr Petra Butler (Director)

Dr Butler teaches at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand where she specialises in domestic and international human rights, public and private comparative law, and private international law with an emphasis on international commercial contracts. She has published extensively in those areas. Dr Butler is New Zealand’s CLOUT correspondent for the CISG and the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts. She has held visiting appointments at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), the University of Melbourne, the University of Adelaide, Bucerius Law School (Hamburg), Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona), and Northwestern University Law School (Chicago). Petra is a fully-qualified German lawyer and a qualified barrister in New Zealan. She regularly advises government departments and the profession on issues in the areas of her research and teaching interests.

Matthew Finn LLM, FCIArb, MCInstCES, FCIOB, FRICS, MAE, MEWI (Director & Assistant Secretary)

Mr. Finn is a Managing Director at Ankura Consulting, based in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIarb), Fellow of Chartered Institute of Building (FCIOB) and a Member of Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering (MCInstCES). Matthew is regularly appointed as an expert witness in the field of quantum (damages) in construction and engineering matters and he has testified in UK Litigation on several occasions. He is accredited with the three mainstream expert witness accreditation bodies (RICS, MEWI and MAE) and he regularly receives referrals from such panels. He is also featured in Who’s Who Legal in various chapters in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Mr. Finn is a certified civil and commercial mediator, construction adjudicator and international and domestic arbitrator sitting on over 25 domestic and international arbitration/ADR panels, including the panel of the largest provider of arbitration services in the UK. He is regularly appointed as an arbitrator, construction adjudicator and mediator. He has worked in the construction industry in both consulting and large main contracting organizations and his area of expertise is in building, civil engineering, nuclear/power, rail, oil and gas, and building services.

Jeffrey Chan, SC (Director)

Mr. Chan is presently the Senior Director of TSMP Law Corporation, Singapore. He previously spent 46 years in the Singapore Legal Service where, among other appointments, he was the Chief of Staff as well as the Deputy Solicitor-General. His practice covers a wide range of legal subjects both domestically as well as internationally. He has appeared frequently in the courts in cases involving a wide area of law, particularly public law. His considerable international experience includes chairing the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in 2000, the UNCITRAL Working Group on Electronic Commerce (Working Group IV) from 2002 to 2005, and the UNCITRAL Working Group on Online Dispute Resolution (Working Group III) between 2014 and 2016.  He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law of the National Society of Singapore and frequently conduct mediations as a Principal Mediator of the Singapore Mediation Centre. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK) as well as the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators.