Eva Kalnina
Eva Kalnina, Partner at Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler (Geneva)
Eva Kalnina acts as arbitrator in commercial and investment treaty disputes. She has acted in arbitrations stemming from a wide array of industries under all major institutional arbitration rules (ICC, ICSID, LCIA, SCC, PCA, SIAC, SCAI, FAI, CAM, LMAA, RAC, VCCA and others), governed by various procedural and substantive laws (English, Swiss, US (New York and Connecticut), Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Singapore, Israeli, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, CISG, UNIDROIT Principles), and involving amounts in dispute of up to US$2 billion.
Eva is a Member of the ICC Court of Arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the ICSID Panel of Arbitrators, and has advised Eastern European governments on their foreign investment policies, as well as provided expert opinions in BIT cases to foreign investors. She also sits as an arbitrator on an ICSID annulment committee.
Eva has particular expertise in CIS disputes, in particular shareholder and finance disputes. In addition to English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, Eva also speaks Latvian and Russian, allowing her to take an active role in complex arbitrations involving international companies and governments from Eastern Europe, including Russia. She is on the recommended list of arbitrators of the Russian Arbitration Center (RAC) and a former council member of the Georgian International Arbitration Center (GIAC). She has chaired very large CIS arbitrations and acted as lead counsel in shareholders’ disputes in Eastern Europe.
An avid art lover, Eva regularly attends art courses at various institutions around the world, including the Courtauld Institute in London.
Eva is recognized as a “Global Leader” in WWL Arbitration 2021 and recommended by Legal 500 EMEA Guide 2020 and 2021, where she is singled out by sources for her skills as a ‘good negotiator’ and recommended for her work as counsel. She is also ranked as “Excellent” in the Leaders’ League 2021 ‘Dispute Resolution – International Arbitration – Switzerland’ Guide, and a Rising Star in the Expert Guides 2019 (Commercial Arbitration). In 2019, Eva was recognized as one of the two most highly regarded individuals in Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration — Future Leaders (Europe), where clients and peers say she is “like a fish in water when it comes to complex and sophisticated arbitration”.
Eva holds an LLM from Harvard Law School (Fulbright scholar) and is admitted to the New York bar. She speaks and publishes regularly on international arbitration topics, has acted as a representative of ICC YAF (Europe) and Young ICCA (Europe), taught courses on dispute settlement and worked as a mediator in Boston courts within the framework of the Harvard Mediation Program.
Jurisdiction: UK, Switzerland, Latvia