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- Le Tribunal de Première Instance, Old Town, Geneva -
 
Matthew is a partner in the firm of Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW), in Geneva.
 
Holman Fenwick Willan is a large international law firm with its head office in London, UK. Its Geneva office specialises in international dispute resolution.
 
Matthew is qualified to practise law in both England & Wales (where he is licensed as a solicitor-advocate) and New York. He is also a (non-practising) barrister, and a member of Lincoln’s Inn, London, with whom he holds the Lord Eastham and Jean-Pierre Warner scholarships; a member of the Denning Society of the Inn; and a member of the Association Suisse de l’Arbitrage. He also sits on the committee of the Geneva chapter of the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of the European Association of Law & Economics and the Society of Legal Scholars.
 
Matthew formerly worked for Denton Wilde Sapte, and Lovells, two international firms of solicitors based in the City of London; 20 Essex Street, a commercial and international law barristers’ chambers in London; the legal department of the World Bank; and the Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR), where he acted as the chief legal adviser to an international civil servant. He also worked as a clerk to Advocate General Sir Francis Jacobs at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
 
Matthew has degrees from Christ’s College, Cambridge, from which he graduated (with BA and MA degrees) with Triple First Class honours; and the University of Chicago (in which he graduated top of his class in his LLM degree). Matthew also holds the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Chicago. His thesis submitted in candidacy for that degree was supervised by Richard Posner, the prominent American jurist and Federal Appellate Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; and his son Eric Posner, the well-known University of Chicago academic and proponent of realism in contemporary international relations.
 
Matthew works in the fields of:
 
· Public international law: the international law applicable to states, international organisations, and the United Nations.
 
· Private international law: the law applicable to international contracts, disputes over choice of laws, and disputes over judicial and arbitral fora.
 
· International private arbitration: disputes between international enterprises or individuals, subject to international commercial arbitration.
 
· “State contracts”: investment contracts between international companies and sovereign governments or public agencies.
 
· Investment treaty arbitration: complaints that states have violated their international legal obligations to foreign investors, under investment treaties, the Energy Charter Treaty, and free trade treaties.
 
· Arbitration applications: using national courts to overturn international arbitration awards or resist their enforcement.
 
· Human rights: enforcing rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, in national and international courts.
 

· EC law: the legal system of the European Union, including competition law and litigation before the European courts in Luxembourg.

· Investment in emerging markets: negotiating investment contracts, addressing international tax issues, attracting treaty protections, negotiating finance for emerging market investments, including multilateral lenders.

 
 
 
- Lincoln’s Inn Hall, London -
 
 
- New York State Court of Appeals, Albany -
 
 
- Law Society’s Hall, London. Note the architectural similarities with the Court of Appeals in Albany -
 
 
- European Court of Justice, Luxembourg. Neo-brutalism masquerading as a new dawn -