financial implications as it typically needs to be provisioned for in a company’s financial statements.
The legal and business communities’ views The importance of time and cost savings is emphasised by the results of an empirical study undertaken to gauge the legal and business communities’ views on the use of international commercial mediation.5 The survey asked respondents to rank a number of pre-existing alternative options in order of importance in terms of their effect on the respondent’s decision to use international commercial mediation. The options included (a) a cultural disinclination toward litigation or arbitration; (b) a desire for a more satisfactory process; (c) a desire to preserve an ongoing relationship; (d) a desire to save costs; (e) a desire to save time; and (f) the complexity of the dispute. In total, 36% of respondents ranked ‘a desire to save costs’ as the most important factor with a further 22.5% ranking it as the second most important factor; 11.2% of respondents ranked ‘a desire to save time’ as the most important factor, with 28.1% ranking it second.6 Whilst the potential options were pre-determined, the results would still indicate that the questions of cost and time savings are of significance to participants engaged in international commercial disputes. Can the Singapore Convention help alleviate the concerns? A clear motivation for the promulgation of the Singapore Convention was to meet this criticism by elevating international commercial mediation to the same level as international commercial arbitration, providing parties with a significantly more time and cost-efficient dispute resolution option. The cost and time saving benefits associated with mediation are widely recognised7 but those may be lost where parties are then required to enforce their rights arising under a settlement agreement in the ordinary course as a matter of contract law.8