Hon Paul Heath KC was, between 2002 and 2018, a Judge of the High Court of New Zealand who sat regularly during that time as an ad hoc Judge of the Court of Appeal. Presently, he practises primarily as an arbitrator but also as a mediator. Paul is based at Bankside Chambers in Auckland but travels frequently to Bankside’s room at Maxwell Chambers Suites in Singapore. Paul has experience in both international and domestic arbitration and mediation. During his time on the Bench he held case management responsibilities in respect of litigation arising out of the grounding of the MV Rena in New Zealand in October 2011. Since leaving the Bench he has been involved in making determinations and conducting mediations involving maritime issues. He is a member of the Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand.

Paul is currently a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK), a chartered arbitrator, a Fellow of both the Arbitrators’ and Mediations Institute of New Zealand and the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. He is a member of panels of arbitrators established and maintained by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, the Dubai International Arbitration Centre, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, the Asian International Arbitration Centre and the New Zealand International Arbitration Centre. He is also a member of P.R.I.M.E Finance’s Panel of Experts for Dispute Resolution.

Paul has a particular expertise in cross border insolvency, something that may arise in the context of the shipping industry. While a Commissioner with the New Zealand Law Commission (an independent statutory law reform agency) he attended meetings of Working Group V at UNCITRAL as New Zealand’s delegate. Subsequently, he wrote the first draft of the UNCITRAL publication The UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency: The Judicial Perspective, in which his contribution was acknowledged in the Preface. He is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, having been inducted in 2000.

As part of his work as a Commissioner of the New Zealand Law Commission Paul was responsible for leading a project which led to a report entitled Improving the Arbitration Act 1996, which resulted (among other things) in the enactment of provisions to codify confidentiality in arbitrations. In 2018, he was appointed as counsel to assist a select committee of Parliament considering another Arbitration Bill.