Introduction

On October 17th 2007 the House of Lords handed down a very important judgment on the construction of arbitration agreements under English law in Fiona Trust & Holding Corp v. Privalov [2007] UKHL 40. Lord Hoffmann rejected the former approach in England where a distinction had been drawn between different formulations in arbitration agreements such as "arising out of", "arising under" etc., and he announced that a fresh start was justified. "In my opinion the construction of an arbitration clause should start from the assumption that the parties, as ...