ABSTRACT
In the last 20 years the notion of confidentiality in international arbitration has undergone an important transformation. Until the 1990s there was a belief that arbitration proceedings were both private and confidential, and that the duty of confidentiality arose from the very nature of arbitration. Confidentiality had thus been listed as one clear advantage of arbitration over litigation to resolve international disputes. The truth of the matter is that the global demand for information and the new media technologies have reached arbitration and have brought in a new perspective, which has caused what Brown describes 'as a disconnect between that presumption and the frequent realities of disclosure and publicity. Publicity was exploited in two different ways: The Consortium pressed Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) by urging the company's shareholders to take action by disclosing full details of their different proposals and giving a full account of what they thought about the arbitration claims and the Consortium's confidence in their policy.
