Personal bio

Michael Bass is a commercial arbitrator and mediator specialising in complex banking and financial markets disputes. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and holds CEDR accreditation as a commercial mediator.
His arbitration and mediation practice draws directly on three decades of senior experience in wholesale banking and capital markets. During his career in finance, Michael ran global business lines spanning fixed income, derivatives, foreign exchange and commodities, serving on regional and global management teams at Standard Chartered Bank, RBC Capital Markets and Westpac Banking Corporation. He was a member of the board of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and held non-executive directorships in the funds management industry.
This depth of market experience — encompassing complex financial products, institutional relationships, risk management and senior leadership — gives Michael an unusual ability to understand the substance of financial disputes, not merely their procedural dimensions. Parties and counsel can expect a neutral who is commercially literate, analytically rigorous, and alive to the practical and reputational consequences of the matters before them.
Michael read Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge (MA) and holds an MSc in Organisational Psychology from Birkbeck, University of London. He is a member of the Civil Mediation Council and a panel mediator at CEDR and TBG.