Having served as the secretary-general of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) since 2016, Sarah Grimmer will be stepping down in August to be succeeded by Mariel Dimsey, who is currently a partner at CMS Hong Kong.
Grimmer will be joining Twenty Essex in Singapore as an arbitrator member. Grimmer’s deputy, Joe Liu, will also step down in June to be succeeded by the HKIAC’s managing counsel Eric Ng. Liu has set up his own arbitrator-only boutique practice, JLIU Dispute Resolution in Hong Kong.
Dimsey, who is also co-head of international arbitration at CMS, has more than 15 years of experience as an advisor, advocate, expert and arbitrator in international arbitration. She has been a partner at the firm since 2018.
Rimsky Yuen, a co-chair of the HKIAC and senior counsel at Temple Chambers in Hong Kong, said: “Sarah has been instrumental to HKIAC’s success over the past six years and we are all sad to see her leave.”
During Grimmer’s tenure, HKIAC was ranked third most-preferred arbitral institution in the 2021 Queen Mary University of London and White & Case International Arbitration Survey. Grimmer oversaw the launch of the HKIAC Case Digest, a database of procedural decisions, which won the 2022 GAR Best Innovation Award from Global Arbitration Review, and HKIAC Case Connect, a free online case management system.
