High Court clarifies the extent of the duty of confidentiality in arbitration

In A Corporation v Firm B & Anor (Rev1) [2025] EWHC 1092 (Comm) (08 May 2025), the English High Court clarified the scope of the duty of arbitral confidentiality under English law, an area that has long given rise to difficult practical issues for practitioners and parties alike. The decision provides useful guidance as to the parameters of the obligation, the types of information it covers and the extent to which the arbitration’s existence, documents or evidence produced within it and awards and other material can be disclosed.

The Court also highlighted the flexible nature of the duty in English law – a point on which the Law Commission commented when considering whether to amend the Arbitration Act 1996 to introduce a statutory duty – emphasising that there is a “sliding scale of arbitration confidentiality” which makes a blanket rule inappropriate.

You can read our team’s analysis of the decision here.