Donny Surtani

Donny Surtani has an independent practice as counsel, arbitrator and mediator.  He is dual-qualified in England and Ontario, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and a former Chartered Management Accountant. With over 25 years of experience in law and finance, Donny specialises in international arbitration, particularly in cases with complex causation and quantum of damages issues. His practice experience encompasses construction, telecoms, energy, banking, financial services, insurance, joint venture and M&A disputes, and civil fraud.  He is a resident arbitrator at Arbitration Place in Toronto, while practising in London through Crown Office Chambers. He has appeared as an advocate before the English High Court, Court of Appeal and various tribunals. In addition to the arbitration and mediation experience below, he has acted in complex cross-border litigation in England and elsewhere, including in some of the largest cases heard in the English Business and Property Courts. Donny also has extensive experience of third party funding, having acted for or advised funders, funded claimants, and defendants facing funded opponents. He was a member of the ICC Task Force on Arbitration and ADR, currently serves as Co-Chair of the Canada Arbitration Week Organising Committee, and has been accredited as a mediator by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (UK). He has been widely published, and has served as a guest lecturer on arbitration and ADR at universities in England, Canada and India. Selected cases:

• Acting for a consortium of litigation funders in LCIA arbitration proceedings against the parties they had funded, in a dispute concerning the enforceability and performance of rights and obligations under a litigation funding agreement (London seat, English law)
• Acting for a Middle Eastern telecoms group on an investment treaty claim against a Middle Eastern State for breaches of fair and equitable treatment standards and creeping expropriation, under UNCITRAL Rules.
• Acted for a consortium of European banks in LCIA arbitration proceedings against an Eastern European borrower and guarantors, and a related freezing injunction, arising out of alleged fraud in the borrower’s declarations of agricultural inventory (London seat, English law)
• Acted for a Middle Eastern investor in a high value fraud claim under the LCIA-India Rules against its joint venture partner in the agriculture sector (New Delhi seat, Indian law)
• Acted for a FTSE-listed communications company on LCIA proceedings and a related injunction application in a claim relating to termination rights in key infrastructure agreements (London seat, English law)
• Acted for a Japanese construction business on an LCIA arbitration dispute concerning a Middle Eastern agency relationship (London seat, Japanese law)
• Acted for a Russian-owned mining group in relation to LCIA arbitration proceedings (and related southern African litigation) arising out of a failed disposal of a metal mining asset, including complex evidence on real-options cash flow valuation methodologies (London seat, English law)
• Sole arbitrator in an ad-hoc arbitration dealing with multi-million dollar claims to post-completion payments and escrow monies under a share purchase agreement (Toronto seat, Ontario law)
• Sole arbitrator in a construction contract dispute under VanIAC Rules, relating to issues of cost overruns, design variations and quantum meruit (Vancouver seat, British Columbia law)