Emerging trends in international corporate disputes

June 2026  |  SPECIAL REPORT: INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION

Financier Worldwide Magazine

June 2026 Issue

Cross-border corporate disputes have always required the careful navigation of jurisdictional complexity, divergent legal frameworks and the practical challenges of assembling facts across multiple geographies.

That landscape is now shifting in ways that fundamentally reshape how disputes arise, how they are investigated and how they are resolved. In this article, we explore how the convergence of geopolitical volatility, macroeconomic pressures and technological integration (or disruption) is affecting the nature of disputes and the dispute lifecycle.

Sanctions and geopolitical fragmentation: from compliance issue to dispute driver

Multinational corporations now operate in a paradox: they are more globally connected than ever yet operate in an increasingly fragmented and unpredictable geopolitical environment.

Global integration has become a source of exposure. Supply chains traverse politically sensitive regions, regulatory regimes increasingly restrict flows of data and capital, and customer and supplier relationships can rapidly turn into a compliance liability.

Sanctions continue to be an important compliance concern, but as of recently, they are also playing a role in shaping dispute strategy. Parties are invoking sanctions as a basis for non-performance, termination or non-payment, driving a rise in disputes centred on force majeure, illegality and contractual risk allocation.

Sanctions are being used in enforcement proceedings to pursue assets held by third parties alleging that the third parties facilitated transactions on behalf of sanctioned defendants. Sanctions are making some disputes more regulatory in nature, and more fact-intensive, requiring companies to integrate sanctions analysis into dispute strategy from the outset.

Supply chain realignment through nearshoring and friendshoring is also contributing to a new wave of cross-border disputes. As companies restructure operations into unfamiliar markets, disputes are emerging from supplier underperformance, cost escalation and contested terminations of legacy relationships.

Tariffs have also emerged as a significant driver of cross-border disputes. Rapid and unpredictable shifts in trade policy have disrupted pricing assumptions embedded in long-term contracts, forcing parties to confront who bears the cost of regulatory change.

Tariff-driven disputes are also surfacing in M&A contexts, where earnout structures and representations about supplier relationships are being tested against a trading environment that looked materially different at signing than at closing. Given that these disputes span multiple legal frameworks, arbitration is often the preferred forum for resolution.

The evolving post-acquisition disputes landscape

Post‑acquisition disputes rose markedly in 2025, and with M&A activity expected to accelerate over the coming year, that trajectory shows no sign of slowing.

Driving this momentum is a combination of pressures where geopolitical turmoil, sanctions and shifting trade regimes meet macroeconomic pressures such as inflation, supply chain disruptions and volatile energy markets. These factors can undermine many of the valuation assumptions on which deals were originally priced.

To bridge valuation gaps in uncertain markets, parties are relying more heavily on risk allocation and contingent deal mechanisms such as earnouts, material adverse change provisions and post‑completion adjustments.

As a greater proportion of deal value becomes deferred or conditional and buyers apply more rigorous post-closing scrutiny, the potential for disputes has expanded. Claims are also evolving.

Allegations of misrepresentation now extend beyond traditional earnings inflation to more complex issues, including environmental, social and governance disclosures, customer attrition and the integrity of financial models underpinning earnout structures.

Parallel to these trends, a further risk allocation tool that has materially influenced the nature of post-acquisition disputes is warranty and indemnity (W&I) insurance, or representations and warranties insurance as it is known in the US.

By transferring the financial risk of breaches of contractual warranties (and, in some cases, indemnities) to insurers, W&I insurance allows parties to mitigate exposure in an increasingly complex deal environment.

Although the W&I product has long been established in North America, its use has similarly become widespread across the UK, Europe and international M&A markets. Disputes that might previously have been pursued through conventional litigation, with the buyer bringing claims directly against the seller, are now frequently resolved through claims made under W&I insurance policies, often culminating in negotiated settlements between insurers and insureds. This, in turn, may require a different legal strategy, as the dispute process becomes less directly adversarial and increasingly focused on commercial resolution.

The availability of W&I insurance has also contributed to an increase in the number of claims or notified disputes, as insured parties are more willing to assert potential breaches where recovery is directed to an insurer, rather than requiring the pursuit of time-consuming and costly adversarial proceedings against the seller.

Ultimately, the combination of global instability and different and more sophisticated deal structures is giving rise to disputes that are materially different, more complex, document‑intensive and frequently dependent on specialised expert evidence than in previous years.

Private credit under stress: a growing source of cross-border disputes

The rapid expansion of private credit, growing to roughly $3 trillion by the end of 2025, has been accompanied by a sharp rise in high-profile defaults exposing structural weaknesses, including fraud, opaque collateral structures and double or triple pledging of assets.

Cases such as the collapse of UK lender Market Financial Solutions in early 2026, where creditors alleged large-scale double-pledging and a significant collateral shortfall, and the 2025 bankruptcies of Tricolor and First Brands in the US, have underscored how weak controls and limited transparency can mask underlying distress until liquidity evaporates.

These events are increasingly giving rise not only to insolvency proceedings but also to complex, multiparty disputes involving lenders, sponsors, auditors and valuation agents, often centred on misrepresentation, competing claims to collateral and enforcement rights.

Looking ahead, the conditions for further disputes are firmly in place. Default rates in private credit reached record levels in 2025 and continue to trend upward into 2026, while rising scrutiny of valuations, liquidity constraints and conflicts of interest are fuelling litigation risk across the sector.

Disputes are expected to expand beyond traditional borrower-lender conflicts to include investor claims and intercreditor battles over priority and collateral. These disputes are more fact-intensive, jurisdictionally fragmented and reliant on forensic reconstruction of asset ownership and cash flows.

Private credit is likely to become a significant and sustained driver of cross-border disputes through 2026 and beyond.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of dispute work

AI is rapidly becoming an influential feature of modern disputes, fundamentally changing how investigations are conducted and how cases are prepared. Adoption among disputes practitioners has been swift, but measured. Most have embraced AI enthusiastically, but cautiously.

AI enhances the speed and scale at which teams can aggregate and triage large datasets, conduct link analysis across disparate datasets, identify patterns and anomalies in financial and transactional data, and surface specific information from vast document populations.

AI-assisted document review has already compressed the timeline and cost of large-scale discovery and investigation work, and its use is now extending into legal research, case preparation and, increasingly, the support of expert witness work.

At the same time, regulators and courts are moving to establish guardrails. Guidance issued across key jurisdictions, including by the UK’s Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Singapore’s Ministry of Law and the Federal Court of Australia, reflects global efforts to define acceptable use.

US courts have begun issuing standing orders and local rules requiring disclosure of AI use and certification that filings have been independently verified by counsel. Expert witness bodies are following suit with the Academy of Experts in the UK publishing guidance earlier this year on the use of AI by expert witnesses. The above examples reflect a growing recognition of the need for a unified and consistent approach for the use of AI in dispute work.

The consensus is that AI is permissible and beneficial, but only when deployed as a supporting tool, not as a substitute for professional judgment. When used appropriately, AI can improve efficiency, reduce cost and, in some cases, enhance access to justice by levelling the playing field for under-resourced parties.

However, the limitations are equally clear. AI systems can produce plausible outputs that are incorrect, including fabricated sources or flawed analytical linkages. The following are key considerations when it comes to AI usage in disputes. First, all sourcing and analysis must be independently verified. Second, strict controls are required to avoid disclosure of privileged or sensitive information to third party AI providers. Third, as with other forms of technical or computer-generated evidence, the weight accorded by the court or tribunals to any AI-generated material will generally increase to the extent that the underlying tool, methodology and assumptions can be transparently explained, independently tested and subjected to meaningful challenge. Finally, practitioners must be especially vigilant in actively assessing bias, gaps and false correlations.

Accountability remains non-delegable. Legal counsel, arbitrators and experts are fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity and explainability of what is presented. Courts in multiple jurisdictions have already sanctioned practitioners for relying on AI-generated, fabricated authorities, with consequences including fines, reputational damage and regulatory scrutiny.

While the emphasis varies, AI is becoming a permanent feature of disputes practice, but only within a framework of transparency, verification and non-delegable human accountability.

Looking ahead

The common thread in these developments is that international disputes are no longer defined predominantly by legal issues, but by the interaction of law, data, technology and geopolitics.

For disputes practitioners, success increasingly depends on understanding these dynamics early, managing complexity across borders and disciplines, and deploying technology responsibly to support more efficient and cost-effective outcomes.

Ultimately, while the triggers of disputes and the tools to manage them will continue to evolve, the necessity for strategic risk management and professional accountability remains the definitive factor in navigating this new landscape.

 

Snežana Gebauer and Neil Ashton are partners and Victoria Middleton is a director at StoneTurn. Ms Gebauer can be contacted on +1 (212) 430 3464 or by email: sgebauer@stoneturn.com. Mr Ashton can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7427 0403 or by email: nashton@stoneturn.com. Ms Middleton can be contacted on + 44 (0)7917 423236 or by email: vmiddleton@stoneturn.com.

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BY

Snežana Gebauer, Neil Ashton and Victoria Middleton

StoneTurn

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