On June 6, from 9 am to 12:30 pm, the Superior Court of Appeals held a seminar called “Corporate Collective Arbitration.” Invited experts discussed key topics such as the confidentiality of arbitration, claim preclusion and the effects of arbitration decisions. The seminar was composed of three panel discussions. The speakers included justices Ellen Gracie, Villas Bôas Cueva and Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino, as well as professors Kazuo Watanabe, Nelson Eizirik, Márcio Souza Guimarães, Eleonora Coelho, Peter Sester, Ana Frazão and Ana Luiza Nery.

As well as serving on the seminar’s scientific coordination committee, together with Justice Ricardo Cueva, Professor Márcio Guimarães of Fundação Getulio Vargas’ Rio de Janeiro Law School, who is the coordinator of its Business Law and Arbitration Study Center (NDEA), also took part in a panel discussion called “The Confidentiality of Collective Arbitration, the Right to Information and Oversight of Shareholders in Publicly Traded Companies,” alongside professors Nelson Eizirik and Eleonora Coelho.

“The seminar was of great importance for the study of the recent phenomenon of corporate collective arbitration, bringing together academics, judges and lawyers who specialize in this area, with convergent and divergent positions, in order to reflect on practical solutions,” Guimarães says.

Juliana Loss, the executive director of the FGV Chamber of Mediation and Arbitration, presided over a panel discussion called “Collective Arbitration in Light of Issue Preclusion and Claim Preclusion.” Legal experts Flávio Luiz Yarshel, Paula Forgioni and Osmar Paixão Côrtes discussed this subject and also commented on the previous panel discussion, called “The Confidentiality of Collective Arbitration, the Right to Information and Oversight of Shareholders in Publicly Traded Companies.”

“Discussions and controversies reveal that arbitration has become more mature in recent years and this has been fundamental for the current deepening of the procedural issues involved, in order to refine the mechanism for increasingly complex sectors. In this context, the participation of arbitration chambers is essential to illustrate the general panorama of institutional arbitration in Brazil,” Loss says.

During the panel discussions, different speakers with converging and divergent positions agreed that collective arbitration in the context of corporate law poses several challenges to legal players and requires careful reflection about arbitration institutions, their role in the area and possible contributions, so that a fair legal order can ultimately be attained through the submission of these conflicts to arbitration.

This year – which is the 26^th anniversary of Brazil’s Arbitration Law and the 20^th anniversary of the FGV Chamber of Mediation and Arbitration – some new challenges have arisen, such as collective arbitration of corporate law, resulting from arbitration’s growing level of maturity in the country. Because of the ongoing evolution of arbitration, the FGV Chamber of Mediation and Arbitration and NDEA are continuously updating their activities to ensure that they remain prominent players in the private justice system in Brazil and Latin America.

To learn about the FGV Chamber of Mediation and Arbitration, click here.