Marcela Kohlbach de Faria has extensive experience as a lawyer, having worked as an associate at Wald Associados Advogados from 2006 until 2013, where she worked on cases involving civil and commercial law, contracts and arbitrations. She has a specialization course in arbitration from International Law Institute (Washington, DC). She is the author of “Annulment of the Arbitral Award: Aspects and Limits”, published in 2014, and also several articles concerning Civil Procedure and Arbitration. She holds a Bachelor´s degree and a Master´s in Law from Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro – UERJ. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Procedural Law also at UERJ.
Tim Martin has extensive experience as an arbitrator with particular expertise in the energy, oil & gas, project infrastructure, and construction sectors. He has been a sole arbitrator, party-appointed arbitrator, institution appointed arbitrator and tribunal chair in institutional and ad hoc international and domestic arbitrations. He has also acted as counsel, mediator, expert witness and strategic advisor in the resolution of a wide range of disputes.
Tim has nearly 40 years of experience in the international oil & gas and infrastructure industries where he was general counsel, country manager, finance director, commercial manager and economist, working in more than 50 countries on some of the largest energy projects in the world. His transactional and disputes work includes JOAs, farmout agreements, sale & purchase agreements, oil service agreements, EPC contracts and host government contracts.
Tim has been counsel in international boundary disputes arising from oil & gas concessions that straddled disputed international boundaries and in sovereignty disputes in domestic courts. He has managed litigation strategy for complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes in national courts in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
Governments and companies have retained Tim as an expert in a number of high profile energy disputes. He has wide-ranging experience in various legal systems including the common law, civil law, Shari’ah law and the communist legal system. His business sector experience includes energy, oil & gas, refining, petrochemicals, mining, infrastructure, construction, international trade & investment, regulatory & administrative, compliance (anti-corruption, sanctions, and boycott law), and finance & banking.
Tim has advised governments, industry organizations, and international and national oil companies on dispute resolution matters. He has organized and chaired for more than a decade the leading annual conference on Dispute Resolution in the International Oil & Gas Business, co-sponsored by the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) and leading international arbitration institutions around the world.
Tim is a Fellow and Chartered Arbitrator of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a Board Director of the American Arbitration Association and a member of the London Court of International Arbitration. He has been elected to the arbitrator panels of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, the ICC International Court of Arbitration, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, the Kuala Lumpur Regional Arbitration Centre, the Pacific International Arbitration Centre, the Bahrain Chamber of Dispute Resolution and the Energy Arbitrators List.
Tim is Chair of the Journal of World Energy Law & Business, the leading journal on international energy and the official journal of the AIPN, which is published by Oxford University Press. Tim co-chaired the AIPN’s Model International Dispute Resolution Agreement Committee and has published and spoken extensively on dispute resolution and energy issues throughout the world.
Tim was President of the AIPN, twice voted its Member of the Year and has received its President’s Award and Legacy Award. He has had leadership roles in a number of other industry organizations, including the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen (CAPL) and the American Association of Petroleum Landmen (AAPL).
Peers, leading arbitration institutions and industry publications have described Tim as the “go-to guy for energy disputes”, “the best around for energy disputes”, an “industry specialist and arbitrator”, a “true innovator in international oil & gas law”, and a “true expert in the oil & gas sector”.
Agostinho Pereira de Miranda is the Senior Partner and founder of the Portuguese law firm Miranda & Associados, with headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal, and offices in nine African countries, as well as in Timor-Leste and Houston, USA.
He is the Chair of the Ethics Committee in the Portuguese Arbitration Association and a member of the ICC Portuguese Arbitration Commission. Agostinho seats on the Panels of Arbitrators and of Conciliators of ICSID (The World Bank).
A graduate of the Coimbra University Law School (1974), Agostinho attended in 1983 post-graduation studies in Comparative International Law at The Institute for International and Comparative Law, Dallas, U.S.A.
He has worked and lived in Lisbon, Luanda (Angola), London, Houston and San Francisco. For approximately 6 years, Agostinho worked as in-house counsel for Gulf Oil Corporation and Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc. In both companies, he was charged with primary responsibility for the legal aspects of their operations in Angola, Zaire (currently the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Gabon. Agostinho also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Cabinda Gulf Oil Company a subsidiary of Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc.
He teaches or has taught Energy Law and/or Arbitration Law at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa Law School (Lisbon, Portugal), Universidade Agostinho Neto (Luanda, Angola), Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (Maputo, Mozambique) and I.S.C.T.E (Lisbon, Portugal).
Agostinho has acted as a consultant to the United Nations, The World Bank, USAID, OPIC and other international organizations. He seats or has sat as a non-executive member of the Board of Directors or Remuneration Committees of several Portuguese companies, including Galp Energia, Zon, Ren, Siderurgia Nacional and Sofid.
Agostinho is a member of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (1985), the American Bar Association (1983) and the International Bar Association (1986). He is the only Portuguese member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the International Senior Lawyers Project.
Agostinho has written extensively on oil and gas, arbitration and various other legal issues.
Mick Smith co-founded Calunius (with Mark Wells) in 2006. He studied Mathematics and then Law at Cambridge University. He speaks English and Spanish.
Mick qualified as a solicitor at Freshfields in 1996, practicing in London and Madrid. Subsequently, he worked in finance in a variety of investment banking roles at Chase Manhattan, Crédit Agricole Lazard Financial Products Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort.
Mick is responsible for origination and transaction execution at Calunius, sourcing and analyzing investments in litigation and arbitration claims. These claims are frequently cross-border involving both common and civil law. Typical examples are:
- Commercial breach of contract cases in courts or arbitration under ICC, LCIA, DIFC, SCC or other rules;
- Competition law claims following a breach of EC regulations; and
- Investment treaty (“BIT”) claims (ICSID and UNCITRAL).
Mick is the author of various recent publications, including:
- the chapter “Mechanics of Third-Party Funding Agreements: A Funder’s Perspective” in the book “Third Party Funding in International Arbitration” by Lisa Bench Nieuwveld and Victoria Shannon (Kluwer Law, October 2012 ISBN 13: 9789041140791);
- “Leniency, Pfleiderer and the impossibility of balance” (with C. Petra Grigoriadou) in Global Competition Review (December 2012).
He is a frequent speaker and contributor internationally on the subject of TPF, and more general financial issues in litigation, including:
- 2012 ADR in Asia Conference (Hong Kong October 2012) - “TPF: Who holds the purse strings in international arbitration?”
- GAR Live (London Nov 2012) – speaking (successfully) for the proposition: “This House believes Third Party Funding is the best thing since Sliced Bread”.
- OGEMID – in Sep/Oct 2012 Mick acted as a moderator on the subjects of Disclosure of Third Party Funding, and related subjects such as Security for Costs, Cost of Capital and Damages methodology.
- ICC France Working Group 2012 (Arbitration financed by third parties)
He is also Calunius’ Compliance Officer. Calunius is subject to regulatory oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Services Authority and the Guernsey Financial Services Commission.