Newmans Row

Full Time Arbitrator and Mediator

International Arbitrator and Mediator

Chris Seppälä acts as an independent arbitrator, mediator and expert in relation to international commercial disputes. He founded the international arbitration practice of the Paris office of White & Case in 1988 (from which he retired in 2023) and has acted as counsel or arbitrator in hundreds of international commercial disputes. He is former Vice-President Emeritus of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”) and has served as FIDIC’s Observer on that court. He is a former board member of the Finland Arbitration Institute.

Chris is internationally known for his experience of multi-billion dollar arbitration cases of the greatest legal and factual complexity. He has represented private corporations and banks, as well as sovereign states or state-owned entities (Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Iran, Kuwait, Peru and Qatar), in international arbitrations, and has also served as chair of the tribunal or co-arbitrator in numerous such cases.

He is one of the world's leading experts on international construction contracts having served as Legal Advisor to the FIDIC Contracts Committee for the past 20 years and Dean of the Faculty of Contracts of FIDIC Academy, FIDIC's learning and development body. He is the author of “The FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary” (Wolters Kluwer, 2023), a detailed commentary on the most widely-used international standard form of construction contract referred to by publishers as “a unique book” with a “comprehensive treatise” that “furnishes an in-depth commentary”. Practitioners such as Sir Vivian Ramsey stated that “there is nobody better able to produce a detailed analysis of the 2017 Red Book than he is.”

He was a member of the working group which prepared the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2016 and co-chair of the committee which produced the 2019 update of the ICC Commission's Report on Construction Industry Arbitrations: Recommended Tools and Techniques for Effective Management.

JD, Columbia Law School

BA, Harvard University

New York State Bar

Paris Bar (emeritus)

Languages: French and English