Chris Seppälä
Independent arbitrator,
mediator & consultant.
About
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Read MoreSeppälä is a former Vice-President Emeritus of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (”ICC’) and served as FIDIC’s Observer on that court from 2016 until his term expired on 30 June 2024. He is one of the world's leading experts on international construction contracts having served as Legal Advisor of the FIDIC Contracts Committee for the past 20 years and being Dean of the Faculty of Contracts of FIDIC Academy, FIDIC's learning and development body. He is the author of “The FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary” (Wolters Kluwer, 2023), a detailed commentary on the most widely-used international standard form of construction contract. He was a member of the working group which prepared the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2016 and co-chair of the committee which produced the 2019 update of the ICC Commission's Report on Construction Industry Arbitrations: Recommended Tools and Techniques for Effective Management. Seppälä is a lecturer on international construction contracts to post-graduates at Paris University (Panthéon-Assas). On January 5, 2024 he was featured in an article in Global Arbitration Review entitled "Seppala goes solo."
Chris Seppälä is an independent arbitrator, mediator and consultant for international commercial disputes. He founded the international arbitration practice of the Paris office of White & Case, where he was a partner for 35 years and has acted as counsel or arbitrator in hundreds of international commercial disputes including multi-billion dollar arbitration cases of the greatest legal and factual complexity. He has represented private corporations and banks, as well as sovereign states or state-owned entities (Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Iran, Kuwait, Peru and Qatar), in international arbitrations, and has served as chair of the tribunal or co-arbitrator in numerous such cases. He began his legal career in the general practice group of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.
