This book has undertaken a detailed analysis of the practice of investment arbitration tribunals of allowing shareholders’ claims for reflective loss. In particular, this book aimed to go further than merely illustrating why shareholders’ claims for reflective loss are not necessarily as harmful as often depicted. Instead, the primary objective of this book was to demonstrate why allowing shareholders’ claims for reflective loss is critical to allow international investment law to fulfill its raison d’être: the promotion and protection of investments in order to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization.

The central actor around which this book revolves is the shareholder. For decades domestic corporate law regimes have regulated the rights and obligations attached to the status of shareholder. One nearly universal rule is the prohibition of shareholders’ claims for reflective loss. Indeed, domestic regimes generally bar shareholders’ claims for reflective loss by limiting their right to a remedy to instances where their direct rights have been infringed upon.