Analysis The Investment Property Of Sovereign Bonds In ICSID Arbitration

The definition of investment is a key part of the international investment law system, which is closely related to ICSID arbitration jurisdiction. Sovereign bond as a new type of transaction, whether it is an investment property, is the bondholder can use ICSID arbitration premise. However, the current international law of sovereign bond is not yet developed, especially in the field of international investment, the same cases involving sovereign bond, ICSID arbitration tribunal may explain the different angles to rule and cause phenomenon of different rulings, which in reality has also appeared.Owing to the lack of definition of investment in the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States, the Investment Protection Agreement sets out the terms of the investment definition in order to resolve this phenomenon, but there are many differences. Some of the agreements directly stipulate that the sovereign bond is invested of the category, and some clear exclusion of sovereign bond, but most of the text on sovereign bond is neither clearly excluded, nor clearly defined. This type of regulation leads to controversy over whether sovereign bond is part of the ICSID Convention and Investment Protection Agreements.However, the analysis of the investment attributes of sovereign bonds based solely on the ICSID Convention or the associated Investment Protection Agreement has some shortcomings, either ignoring the will of the host country due to the provisions of the ICSID Convention or the general intent of the ICSID Convention due to the special provisions of the Investment Protection Agreement. Thus, the review of the investment property of sovereign bond should be considered "dual examination",while the use of treaty interpretation of the relevant rules, infer that sovereign bonds are not excluded from the ICSID Convention context outside the investment. With the renewal of investment protection agreements, some of the text of the agreement will provide for certain restrictive conditions, such as investment needs with the host state has territorial relevance, investment needs compliance with the laws of the host state, and these will have a direct impact on the investment properties of sovereign bonds. However, sovereign bond has own characteristics, there is a primary market and secondary market,especially the secondary market is rarely exists in the host country in the physical , which makes the territorial relevance of the judgments become difficult. By combining ICSID arbitration practice and related academic theory, it is found that the use of legal contact standards to review the territorial relevance is reasonable. At the same time, we can learn from the investment characteristics of the new investment protection agreement as a guide to determine whether the sovereign bond has obvious investment characteristics.