ARBITRATION ; ;Appeal against award application to set aside permission to serve claim form out of jurisdiction seat of the arbitration to be determined as at beginning of relevant arbitration ;Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC v Paymentech Merchant Services Inc: QBD (Aikens J): 27 October 2000 ;A dispute between the parties was referred to arbitration.

The arbitrator found for the respondent; the appellate arbitrator dismissed the applicants appeal.

The applicant sought to challenge the decision under ;ss 67, 68 and 69 of the Arbitration Act 1996, and was granted permission to serve an arbitration claim form out of the jurisdiction on the respondent, on the basis that the seat of the arbitration was in the UK.

S.3 of the 1996 Act provided that the seat of the arbitration meant the juridical seat of the arbitration, determined having regard to the parties agreement and all the relevant circumstances.

The respondent, contending that the seat was in the USA, applied to set aside the permission to serve out of the jurisdiction.

;V.

Veeder QC and Mark Pelling (instructed by Clyde & Co.) for the applicant.

Matthew Newick, solicitor (of Clifford Chance) for the respondent.

;Held, granting the application, that the arbitration referred to in s.3 was the individual arbitration with which the case was particularly concerned; that in the present case the relevant arbitration was the appeal arbitration; that an arbitration must have a seat when it began, which could not be changed without the parties agreement; that, therefore, when determining the seat of an arbitration the court must determine the seat at the point at which the relevant arbitration began; that the court should have regard to all the relevant circumstances up to that point, but not to circumstances relating to subsequent stages in the arbitral process; that in the circumstances the seat was not in the UK and permission to serve out of the jurisdiction must be set aside.