On 29 September 2016, the Singapore Court of Appeal ("SGCA" or the "Court") released its much-anticipated judgment in Sanum Investments Ltd. v Government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic ("Sanum v Laos"). In a carefully reasoned decision, Singapore's apex court reversed a decision of the Singapore High Court, which had previously held that an UNCITRAL tribunal seated in Singapore had no jurisdiction to hear certain claims by a Macanese investor under the 1993 Bilateral Investment Treaty between the People's Republic of China (the "PRC") and the Lao People's Democratic Republic ("Laos") (the "PRC-Laos BIT"). The SGCA held that the tribunal did have jurisdiction on two grounds: first, the PRC-Laos BIT applied to the Macau Special Administrative Region ("Macau"), so the Macanese investor was an "investor" under Article 1(2)(b) of the BIT; and second, the investor's claims fell within the dispute resolution clause at Article 8(3) of the BIT and therefore the tribunal had subject matter jurisdiction to hear the investor's claims.
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Originally published as a two-part blog post by Kluwer Arbitration
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