HKIArb Annual Ball 1st March 2002

The Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators held its first Annual Ball on 1 March 2002, and a successful event it was with a wide attendance of persons, including those from the legal and engineering professions.

The Institute would like to express special thanks to Eudrey Eu, who joined us as Guest Speaker, to Elaine Liu who so eloquently performed as Master of Ceremonies, to Karen Tennant for skilfully organising the evening event and to all guests who made it a successful event.

The following is an excerpt of President Huen Wong's speech given at the Annual Ball.

"This has, so far, been a busy year for us. We have continued to be active in promoting our Institute within Hong Kong and the Region. We have signed Co-operation Agreements with several bodies including the Dalian and Chongqing Arbitration Commissions.

We intend to put these Co-operation Agreements into practice, as we have already done this year, by holding events like the successful mock arbitration held in Guangzhou in December. This event was jointly organised by our Institute, the Guangzhou Arbitration Commission, The Law Society of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Federation of Women Lawyers. A VCD of the event is currently in production thanks to the generosity of the Law Society, whose President Mr Tsoi is with us this evening, in funding this project and copies will be made available to interested parties.

We also took part in a conference on the Comparison in the Legal Systems between Mainland China and Hong Kong which was held in Shanghai last November.

The Institute is also a member of the Working Party on Enforcement of Arbitral Awards in Mainland China. The aim of this working party is to review the progress of co-operation between Hong Kong and Mainland in enforcing arbitration awards with a view to further improving the Arbitration (Amendment) Ordinance of February 2000.

Locally, we keep up our efforts to promote the Institute by organising regular evening seminars and other training programmes. Our recent guest speakers have included the Hon. Justice Bokhary and Mr John Tackaberry QC. We have also targeted the promotion of our Institute to the actual end users of arbitrators by delivering talks to bodies such as the Hong Kong Chinese General Chamber of Commerce.

As I mentioned briefly we are developing training programmes for our membership. Our first Arbitration Workshop, which was designed to help practitioners solve real life problems, was held in December and was very successful. We are also in the process of developing a Fellowship Training Course and details of this will be available shortly.

To help members gain more exposure to arbitration, we are working very closely with the Society of Hong Kong Real Estate Agents Ltd to develop a joint arbitration scheme. This scheme is meant to be a simple but alternative method for resolving disputes in relation to various aspects of the estate agency business.

Our membership continues to grow and we now have over 260 Associate members and over 130 Fellow members, with a few more applications to be considered.

Our Code of Ethics has just been launched and copies have been circulated to all our members. I would like to thank the Chartered Institute for allowing us to base our code on their own Code of Practice.

Looking forward our Institute along with other bodies, including the Law Society of Hong Kong, are contemplating launching a series of seminars and presentations to persuade Beijing to consider using Hong Kong as a base for arbitration for Olympic related projects.

I would like to thank all of you for supporting the Institute this year and for coming to our annual get together. I would like to say thank you to Mario Valderrama who has again made the journey from the Philippines to be with us this evening.

I would also like to say thank you to my Vice-President Mike Byrne. He has supported and promoted the Institute since its formation in 1997. Mike has recently retired and will shortly be leaving Hong Kong for the UK. Thank you Mike for all your hard work and commitment to the Institute and I wish you, and Carol, well in your retirement.

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you, and please enjoy this evening."