Arbitration

Arbitration is a private judicial procedure in which parties agree to submit their dispute to one or more arbitrators whose binding decision (the award) has the force of a court judgment. In international M&A, arbitration clauses are standard in SPAs and shareholders' agreements to handle post-closing disputes: earn-out disagreements, completion accounts disputes, warranty claims. The main institutional centres for Franco-Swiss transactions are the ICC (Paris), the Swiss Arbitration Centre (Geneva/Zurich) and the CMAP (Paris). Awards are enforceable across 170+ countries under the New York Convention.

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Example: a SPA for the sale of a Swiss biotech company includes an ICC arbitration clause with seat in Geneva, Swiss substantive law and French/English as arbitration languages. A post-closing dispute on the valuation of a milestone payment worth CHF 3.0 million is submitted to a three-member tribunal; the proceedings last 22 months and result in an award partially in favour of the seller.

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Hectelion acts as financial expert in arbitration proceedings, preparing valuation reports and providing expert testimony in complex M&A and corporate finance disputes.