Expert resume of Eli Whitney Debevoise II
Senior Partner at Arnold and Porter LLP
Mr. Debevoise practices in international litigation and arbitration, with particular experience in investor-state arbitration at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He is a former member of the ICSID Panels of Arbitrators and of Conciliators. He served as representative of the United States at meetings of the ICSID Administrative Council. His has served as arbitrator in investor-state arbitration under ICSID and UNCITRAL Rules, as well as an International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”) appointed arbitrator in commercial cases; and has experience with Inter-American Arbitration Commission, UNCITRAL, ICC, ICDR, London Sugar Association and ad hoc arbitrations. He acted as counsel in the first-ever WTO panel and Appellate Body proceeding, and other GATT and WTO panel proceedings, and has handled multi-jurisdictional disputes, international insolvencies, asset- recovery, foreign sovereign immunity and act of state cases. He contributed to the development of the P.R.I.M.E. Finance Arbitration Rules.
His transactional experience includes counselling a sovereign issuer of more than $100 billion of debt securities with arbitration as method for dispute resolution as well as representation of clients in a variety of international transactions, including registered and Reg S/Rule 144A offerings, exchange offers, debt financings and worldwide equity placements; cross-border investment, including power projects, privatizations, private equity and mergers and acquisitions; financings by international financial institutions and bilateral credit agencies; and advice to financial institutions, central banks and stock and futures exchanges on financial institution regulatory legislation (Dodd-Frank) and rulemaking processes.
As Presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed U.S. Executive Director at The World Bank Group from April 2007 - March 2010, he represented the United States on the boards of the four institutions of the World Bank Group with a combined balance sheet of nearly $500 billion: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency, and at sessions of the Administrative Council of ICSID, the World Bank’s fifth institution. As a senior U.S. Treasury official, he participated in preparations for G-8 and G-20 summits. He had a leading role in capital increase and share realignment negotiations and served on the Audit, Corporate Governance and Pension Finance Committees, as well as the Information Technology Working Group.
Law Clerk to the Hon. William J. Holloway, Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit – 1978-79.
He received a J.D. from Harvard University in 1977 and a B.A. from Yale University in 1974.