International Law and Foreign Direct Investment provides an overview of the law of foreign direct investments, incorporating a thorough exposition of the legal principles that are likely to affect a commercial investment in a foreign country. It analyzes the manner in which the principles have been interpreted and applied by international courts, domestic courts, and arbitral tribunals. The book should be of interest to both practitioners and scholarly lawyers.

This book is a thought-provoking and authoritative text on this fast moving field of international law.

Over the past twenty years, foreign direct investments have spurred widespread liberalization of the foreign direct investment (FDI) regulatory framework. By opening up to foreign investors and encouraging FDI, which could result in increased capital and market access, many countries have improved the operational conditions for foreign affiliates and strengthened standards of treatment and protection. By assuring investors that their investment will be legally protected with closed bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and double taxation treaties (DTTs), this in turn creates greater interest in FDI.

Two of the distinguishing features of the law on foreign direct investment (FDI) are its complexity and its creativity. The law on FDI embraces the domestic rules and regulations dealing with foreign controlled businesses as well as the numerous bilateral and multilateral legal instruments. It is influenced by awards of international arbitration tribunals as well as numerous other sources. Consequently, it is always changing. The various actors involved, including transnational corporations, local companies, investment promotion agencies, and multilateral donors, as well as lawyers advising foreign investors or their local counterparts and financial intermediaries, each follow their own interests. By its nature, FDI involves the interaction, and sometimes the clash, between different legal concepts of the participants and regulators. Counsels to local governments and domestic partners in a joint venture with foreign companies may not always be accustomed to legal documentation in an Anglo-American or continental European style. As a result, dealing with FDI requires an ongoing learning process for all who wish to understand and successfully manage foreign investment transactions. All this elucidates the need for a multi-author book which covers various areas of the law on FDI from different perspectives. The authors of this book are all concerned with FDI as either academics or practicioners and come from a variety of legal, academic and geographical backgrounds. The book consists of three parts: first, a general introduction on FDI by Dr. Escher; next, an analysis on the emerging international law on FDI and related areas; and finally, an overview of FDI law in a variety of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin-America, and Europe.

The effect on developing countries of the arrival of foreign direct investment (FDI) has been a subject of controversy for decades in the development community. The debate over the relationship between FDI in developing countries and the progress of these countries towards human development is an ongoing and often heated one. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective combining insights from international investment law, human rights law and economics, this book offers an original contribution to the debate. It explores how improvements ...

This new edition of Sornarajah's book, available for the first time in paperback, surveys the international law developed to protect foreign investment by multinational corporations. The area has always been one of controversy due to the different political and economic conflicts that exist in the field. The book assesses the role of multinational corporations in making foreign investments, and considers the ways in which misconduct on the part of such corporations in host states could be controlled. Sornarajah focuses on the protection of foreign investment and the problems associated with such protection. He explores treaty-based methods, and examines several bilateral and regional investment treaties. The failure to agree on a multilateral treaty system and the inability to incorporate a discipline on investment within the WTO are also considered. He takes account not only of the law, but also of the relevant literature in economics, political science and other associated disciplines.

Increasing international investment, the proliferation of international investment agreements, domestic legislation, and investor-State contracts have contributed to the development of a new field of international law that defines obligations between host states and foreign investors with investor-State dispute settlement. This involves not only vast sums, but also a panoply of rights, duties, and shifting objectives at the juncture of national and international law and policy. This engaging Research Handbook provides an authoritative account of these diverse investment law issues.