Leading Scottish judge Lord Glennie has been appointed as the next chair of the Scottish Arbitration Centre (SAC) as it adds four new members to its board.

The appellate judge to the Court of Session, who retires from the bench this month, will replace Brandon Malone in October next year and will serve as vice chair until then. Fellow new board member and former Dentons partner Mary Thomson has been chosen to serve as his deputy.

Glennie was previously Scotland’s principal commercial judge and the designated judge responsible for delivering judgments under Scotland’s own arbitration legislation.

On his retirement, he will become an arbitrator; rejoining his old London set of chambers, Twenty Essex, and the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. His appointment adds high-level commercial insights to the SAC, with the imprimatur of a judge widely respected both locally and internationally for his work. 

Thomson, meanwhile, is an experienced arbitrator and barrister who works out of London’s 36 Stone Chambers and Pacific Chambers in Hong Kong. 

The other new board members are Peter Scott Caldwell, an engineer and arbitrator and former secretary-general of Hong Kong’s international arbitration centre, and dual-qualified Paris advocat and Scottish solicitor Gillian Carmichael Lemaire, who practices as an arbitrator and mediator in London.

Speaking at the SAC’s virtual annual conference, Malone welcomed the  increase in the number of women board members, which has doubled. “The fact that we have been able to attract such expertise and diversity to the Board is testament to our development and success as an organisation over the last ten years,”  he added.

Glennie said: “I hope that my previous experience in international arbitration and more recently as an arbitration judge will assist with the work of the centre. I look forward to working with Brandon Malone and the other directors and to the new challenges and opportunities that await.”

Malone was due to step down as chair next February, but will now remain in post until September so he can host the ICCA’s delayed biannual conference in Edinburgh. 

The premier conference for arbitrators has been postponed twice so it can be held in person. It is now scheduled for 26-29 September 2021.