Giorgio Giuseppe Sacerdoti

Giorgio Sacerdoti has more than 30 years of professional experience in international commercial and investment arbitration, predominantly as an independent arbitrator based in Milan. Professor Sacerdoti is Of Counsel to CBM & Partners and formerly Of Counsel to Eversheds.

Professor Sacerdoti frequently acts as chairman or party-appointed arbitrator in ICC, LCIA, SCC and ad hoc (UNCITRAL) arbitrations. His experience covers international contracts (sale of goods, plants supply, BOT), distribution, acquisitions and joint ventures, IP and construction, involving a variety of countries and legislations. He is a member of the LCIA, Milan’s Club of Arbitrators and of the SIAC (Singapore) Users’ Council. He is also on the list of arbitrators of the Kuala Lumpur, Shenzhen and Beijing arbitration centres.

Professor Sacerdoti, who is member of the Italian Bar, is at ease with civil and common law proceedings and substantive law, being a JD (Milan) and LLM (Columbia Law School) graduate.

He is on the ICSID official arbitrators list and has been appointed as chair or a member of arbitral tribunals in a number of sensitive investment arbitrations under the BITs of Argentina, Cyprus, France, Greece, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Spain, Turkey, the United States and the United Kingdom and under the ECT and the NAFTA.

Giorgio Sacerdoti brings to arbitration – specifically investment arbitration – his unique experience as an international adjudicator, having served from 2001 to 2009 as the European judge at the seven-member Appellate Body of the WTO (chairman 2006–2007), where he participated in deciding almost 50 interstate trade disputes. He has held various posts in the public sector including Vice-Chairman of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions until 2001 where he was one of the drafters of the “Anticorruption Convention of 1997”. He has acted as consultant to the Council of Europe, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Bank in matters related to foreign investments, trade, bribery, development and good governance. In the private sector, he has often served as arbitrator in international commercial disputes and at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

After graduating from the University of Milan with a law degree summa cum laude in 1965, Professor Sacerdoti gained a Master in Comparative Law from Columbia University Law School as a Fulbright Fellow in 1967. He was admitted to the Milan bar in 1969 and to the Supreme Court of Italy in 1979.

He has has published extensively on international trade law, investments, international contracts and arbitration. He teaches arbitration and international trade and investment law as an emeritus professor at Bocconi University in Milan.

A native Italian and French speaker, Professor Sacerdoti is an accomplished linguist with fluency in English and German. He also conducts arbitration in Spanish.