The Madrid International Arbitration Centre – Ibero-American Arbitration Centre (CIAM-CIAR) expands its structure with the creation of three new Working Groups: Private Clients and Family Business; Aeronautical, Space and Defense Arbitration, y Health.

The Center’s Working Groups analyze the challenges facing each sector, determine the role that arbitration can and should play in each of them, and formulate proposals to offer a specialized service tailored to the real needs of users. At the same time, they serve as the institution’s point of connection with end users. The flexibility of arbitration allows the procedure to be adapted to the nature of each dispute and the particularities of the economic sector involved.

In this context, the Groups are made up of experts from companies, arbitrators, law firm attorneys, representatives of industry associations, and academics. They serve as spaces for analysis and research, helping the Center to better understand the needs of each sector, promote best practices, and bring the institution closer to its community. Together, they already bring together 420 members of numerous nationalities, which reinforces the diversity of perspectives and knowledge of arbitration practice.

Working groups adapted to the sectoral needs of arbitration

The Private Clients and Family Business Working Group addresses, in a specific and cross-cutting manner, the needs, challenges, and opportunities of private clients and family businesses as users of arbitration, analyzing their reality from a comprehensive perspective that combines legal, patrimonial, structural, and personal aspects.

“The global business environment continues to have a significant presence of family groups, which in turn require specialized dispute resolution spaces, always considering the particularities of their family structures, such as multiple nationalities, confidentiality, combinations of disciplines such as international taxation, and inheritance, fiduciary, or civil rights,” said Javier Robalino Orellana, co-chair of the Group and managing partner of Robalino, who assured that the creation of this international and multidisciplinary team is “aimed at finding solutions for family groups and their assets, thus promoting the active use of ADR.”

For her part, co-chair Elena Sevila, partner at 5Gambit Disputes, stressed that the creation of this Group responds to the rise of large estates, the growing importance of family businesses and, in parallel, the emergence of new investor profiles that share the need for highly specialized solutions. “Their demands, marked by confidentiality, a high degree of sophistication, and a growing multi-jurisdictional dimension, require specific approaches to the management and resolution of increasingly complex conflicts,” she said.

For its part, the Working Group on Aeronautical, Space, and Defense Arbitration focuses on analyzing these three sectors with the aim of bringing arbitration closer to their respective industries and consolidating CIAM-CIAR as a leading forum for the resolution of complex disputes in these areas. Led by María Jesús Guerrero Lebrón, Professor of Commercial Law at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, this Group will carry out its activities in collaboration with the Spanish Association of Aeronautical and Space Law (AEDAE).

Guerrero has emphasized the growth of disputes in the aircraft manufacturing industry and its auxiliary industry (where Spain plays a prominent role), in airport management, and in cargo transport accidents, areas in which arbitration can offer more agile, specialized, and efficient solutions, as well as in the space and defense fields, with subgroups dedicated to these matters. The Group’s president also mentioned that it was created “with the aim of bringing together leading professionals in the sector to share experiences, promote the dissemination of arbitration among specialized lawyers, and bring it closer to the industry. Our goal is to consolidate CIAM-CIAR as the leading arbitration center in this field, a genuine alternative to ordinary jurisdiction, taking advantage of all the benefits offered by Madrid due to its strategic location and drawing on the extraordinary value of the qualified professionals who make up this Group.”

Finally, the Health Working Group has been created with the aim of promoting and facilitating the use of arbitration in the health sector, especially in the healthcare and pharmaceutical fields, “whose regulatory complexity and economic dimension require agile, specialized, and predictable dispute resolution frameworks,” as indicated by Urquiola de Palacio, managing partner of Palacio y Asociados, Abogados; Vice President of CIAM-CIAR, and Co-Chair of the Group.

She also emphasized that this space, made up of different specialists from the sector with varied profiles, contributes to raising awareness, improving, and promoting a stable and efficient environment for resolving conflicts that all actors in the healthcare ecosystem may face.

For her part, the group’s co-chair, Raquel Ballesteros, an independent arbitrator and expert in pharmaceutical and health law, pointed out that the pandemic has given rise to a veritable tsunami of new therapies, products, and services (personalized medicine, telemedicine, robotics, AI, etc.) and an unprecedented ecosystem of collaboration, convergence, and alliances. “Conflict resolution methods must keep pace with this extraordinary innovation in the sector, redesigning themselves as necessary to adapt to its needs and peculiarities. This is the exciting challenge facing the new CIAM-CIAR Health Working Group, in which we are privileged to have leading figures from the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector on both sides of the Atlantic.”

CIAM-CIAR adds 14 sectoral Working Groups

With these three new additions, CIAM-CIAR now has a total of 14 Working Groups: Aviation, Space, and Defense Arbitration; Investment and State Arbitration; Banking and Securities Market; Private Clients and Family Business; Construction and Engineering; Corporate; Sports and Entertainment; Digital Economy and Intellectual Property; Energy; Maritime CIAM-CIAR / AEDM; Experts; Health; Insurance and Reinsurance CIAM-CIAR / SEAIDA; and Tourism and Hotels.