Dear members and subscribers,
I hope this message finds you well and in good swing. It is springtime and with it come a lot of good news!
We have been very busy and time has flown by… I have slowly settled in in Bonn and enjoy riding my race bike to Bad Godesberg to the DIS villa which is busy and lively. The DIS team works around the clock to administer the 279 cases pending at the DIS - out of which 65 cases have been submitted in 2023. However, you can always hear laughter in the corridors! The team is great, truly motivated and in a good spirit. A big thank you to all of them for their dedication and hard work.
I am pleased to announce that we have promoted Carina Alcoberro to Senior Counsel. Carina joined the DIS in 2022 and has reached a high level of expertise and recognition in her field, particularly in administering complex arbitration and compliance related cases. I congratulate Carina warmly on her new role.
A very warm welcome to Mr Ivan Petrov who just recently joined the DIS as Counsel in Bonn. Ivan has worked as an associate at CMS in Sofia and received a master of law s degree from the Humboldt University Berlin in 2020. We are very glad to have him on board and for him to bring his unique skills and experience to the team. You can learn more about him in this newsletter’s section "Insights: Behind the Scenes of the DIS".
On that note, did you know that there are now 13 languages spoken at the DIS secretariat? In addition to German and English, members of the DIS team also speak French, Spanish, Catalan, Korean, Finnish, Russian, Bulgarian, Italian, Swedish, Danish and Japanese. We are truly international!
However, we are not yet fully staffed. We are still hiring and searching for a counsel for the Case Management Team as well as a project counsel for the various projects we want to tackle to further develop the DIS. Please spread the word. We look forward to every application.
What else happened?
First, we have held our general meeting in Munich on 3 May 2023 and presented to you our audited annual financial statement 2022. The DIS is now back on a sound financial footing. We hope that this course will now be maintained and do our best to ensure this.
In addition, we achieved record registrations for our spring conference in Munich and ended up with more than 310 participants. I was thereby in the fortunate position to see and talk to colleagues and friends I have not met in a long time. It was a pleasure to host the conference and to see so many happy faces. The feedback we received was truly overwhelming. Thank you again for your participation, interest and vivid discussions. Without you this success would not have been possible.
In addition, a large number of interesting and insightful events hosted or co-hosted by the DIS took place in the last months – you can read more about them in this newsletter. We will continue with this pace and are planning a lot more events in the upcoming months, e.g. “A look behind the scenes of the DIS, the HKIAC and the Swiss Arbitration Centre” in Berlin and the biennial conference of the DIS and the German Federal Ministry of Justice in Karlsruhe, this time focusing on the convergence of arbitration and state courts inter alia.
For me, it is also very important to create liveliness and many opportunities for exchange and networking. Therefore, we will have a big Summer Party in the gardens of our DIS office in Bonn. Come and join us for a great Summer Night on 25 August 2023. Mark your calendar and get ready for a garden party experience! I hope to see many of you there and I look forward to spending an enjoyable evening with you.
Yours,
Ramona Schardt