Introduction

Contracts have always been the means of choice to facilitate investments in foreign states. Prior to the establishment of the now pivotal investment treaty regime, they were the main source of protection for investors when they decided to place their capital abroad. Customary international law on the protection of foreign property always loomed in the background, but its standards were often disputed and its mechanisms hardly reliable from an investor's viewpoint. Therefore, using the contract that had to be concluded anyway for fixing the details of an investment project so as to ...