Suzie A. Savage

Practice Areas

Suzie’s practice focuses on international arbitration and, particularly, on investment treaty arbitration and public international law. She is the London-based Managing Partner of our Astana office, where she spends a significant amount of time each year.

Suzie acts for respondent states, and has been involved in cases in the oil, gas, mining, energy and banking sectors. This includes acting in disputes involving oil transportation and transhipment, oil and gas exploration and production, power facilities and trading companies and finance. She deals with disputes arising out of Bilateral Investment Treaties and the Energy Charter Treaty, and with such issues as jurisdiction, unlawful expropriation, unfair and inequitable treatment and denial of justice. Her experience includes disputes over the alleged nationalization of strategic assets, the effect and enforceability of stabilization provisions, and breaches of other commercial agreements.

Her extensive experience includes advising on significant high-value ad-hoc arbitrations under the UNCITRAL Rules, as well as on arbitrations under the rules of major international arbitration institutions, including the ICC and ICSID. Suzie’s experience includes ICSID annulment applications, security for costs and disclosure of third-party funding applications, applications for bifurcation and to remove arbitrators, challenges to jurisdiction, applications to disqualify arbitrators, and s1782 applications for discovery in the United States in aid of arbitration. In addition to her investment-treaty work, Suzie has been involved in arbitration-related court proceedings, such as challenges to Awards under the Arbitration Act 1996, enforcement of Awards and costs recovery.

Suzie is a regular lecturer on international arbitration topics to clients and undergraduate and postgraduate students in Kazakhstan. She is also a regular podcaster including presenting a biannual Arbitral Insights podcast on investment treaty arbitration covering important developments in the investor-state dispute settlement space, and exploring what to expect in the next 12 months, and hosting the likes of Meg Kinnear, the former Secretary General of ICSID, for the Reed Smith podcast Women in Arbitration miniseries.