Penny Madden KC

Practice Areas

Penny Madden is an English-qualified King’s Counsel and serves as Co-Partner-in-Charge of the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Co-Chair of the International Arbitration Practice Group globally.

Penny has a wide range of experience in all key aspects of international arbitration with particular expertise in oil and gas, energy, mining, infrastructure, and telecoms disputes. She represents clients across the globe under a wide variety of institutional rules and regularly sits as an arbitrator. She is an expert in investor-state arbitration, and wrote the seminal chapter on “Arbitrability and Public Policy Challenges” in “The Guide to Challenging and Enforcing Arbitration Awards”. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee counselling the UK Law Commission on its review of the Arbitration Act 1996.

Representative cases include: securing a US$2.4 billion award for Crescent Petroleum in a PCA administered arbitration against the National Iranian Oil Corporation for breaches of a gas sale agreement and pipe-line infrastructure project; securing a US$4 billion settlement for Orascom Teleocm in its UNCITRAL investment treaty arbitration against Algeria for expropriation and breach of the fair and equitable treatment standard; securing a US$5 billion treaty arbitration award for Yukos Capital against The Russian Federation for expropriation of loans to Yukos Oil under the Energy Charter Treaty; representing a US mining company in Hong Kong arbitration proceedings against a Chinese SOE over the disputed ownership and management of an African mining project; defending a US oil major in two arbitrations against a Middle East SOE in relation to the management and handover of two vast off-shore oil and gas fields; and representing two Middle East oil and gas companies in multiple LCIA arbitrations relating to a multi-billion oil and gas project in Kurdistan, as well as in related prior proceedings against the KRG.

Chambers UK 2023 notes that Penny “is a superb practitioner and leader who is fully devoted to her cases. She is trusted by clients for her commercial vision and her impeccable advocacy skills”, and that “she has impressive presence in hearings”. Clients have also described her as “absolutely superb. She is no-nonsense, super smart and has excellent advocacy skills”. Best Lawyers UK recommends Penny in the field of International Arbitration (2019-2023), she is listed as an expert in Arbitration in Who’s Who Legal 2022 and is also named as a ‘Litigation Star’ for International Arbitration by Benchmark Litigation Europe 2022. Ms Madden’s team won Arbitration Team of the Year 2020 in the British Lawyer Awards for its innovative representation of a mining investor in an ICSID investment treaty arbitration. She is recognised in Lawdragon 500 Global Litigation Lawyers guide 2022 and in Expert GuidesGuide to World’s Leading Women in Business Law.