The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration (ICA) has ramped up its Asia presence, opening a secretariat - primarily concerned with case management - in Singapore, in a bid to continue boosting its Asia footprint.

The case management team is to handle “cases in real time, to better serve the dispute resolution needs of users in Singapore adn the wider region”, according to its press release.

The secretariat was set up via a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Singapore’s Ministry of Law, signed in June 2017.

It opened on 23 April in Maxwell Chambers, where the ICC’s Asia Regional Office is also based, as well as the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) headquarters.

This is ICA’s second case management team in Asia (after having opened in Hong Kong in 2008) and the fourth outside of the ICC’s headquarters in Paris.

According to the ICC’s press release:

Singapore was chosen in 38 of 79 new cases seated in South and East Asia, moving up from 6 th to 5 th most popular place of ICC Arbitration following France (121), Switzerland (90), the United Kingdom (73) and the United States (51).

In the South and East Asia region, Singapore accounted for close to 8% of all parties represented in an ICC arbitration, following Korea (20%) India (19%) and China (16%).

The ICC has been focusing heavily on India, having promoted Indian lawyer and deputy counsel Abhinav Bhushan as its South Asia director in 2016, and former London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) India director and registrar as ICC India vice-chair in November of last year.