Your main concerns:
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Cost
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Fairness/Ease of Use
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Power to arbitrate (and enforcement)
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Arbitrations either come with a flat fee or per-hour/per diem rate. Be sure to check the arbitration centre guidelines (They may or may not also include the cost of the arbitrator). HK and Singapore should be relatively cost-effective.
to keep costs down, you may also wish to include the following terms in the arbitration clause:
1 arbitrator to be jointly appointed by the parties or by the arbitration centre (instead of 3)
1 day arbitration maximum (or consecutive days at least)
ICC may be more expensive and more than what you require.
Costs also include:
Travel costs - bringing you, your witnesses and documents to the arbitration.
Proximity - You want something relatively close by geographically to keep costs down,
language - if you are English-speaking, your documents are in English, find an English-speaking country. Otherwise, you may have to pay for translators, translations, notarizations of translations, etc.
Again, all this depends a lot on how much is at stake.
Also, depending on your particular business concern, some arbitration centres may be more expert in those fields than others (e.g. construction, hi-tech, etc.), but for general business contracts, this should not be a great concern.
- Fairness. HK and Sing should be OK
Generally, I would not recommend a foreigner in Taiwan to use the Taiwan arbitration association in any dispute against a Taiwanese. I know of cases of bias. While I can’t say all Taiwan arbitrations are horror stories where foreign parties are involved, my experience certainly left a bad taste (along the lines of open racist comments by the chief arbitrator towards my foreign client in front of my client in Mandarin that “[Your client’s nationality] are all liars”)
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a. The best way to avoid disputes about the right to arbitrate is to use the form arbitration clauses (or as close as possible while fitting your business needs at the same time) that are often provided by the arbitration centre (or the Rules) that you have chosen. You don’t want to be wasting time and money fighting over arbitration before you get to arbitration. A lot of lawyers who draft contracts don’t pay attention to details of arbitration clauses, because it’s low priority for them.
b. enforcement. Because most countries have signed the NY Convention (which is agreement on enforcing arbitration awards in each other’s jurisdictions), you should be generally be ok. However, be safe and check the country where arbitration is to take place and the country where the counterparty’s assets (or the assets in dispute) are, and make sure they both have signed the treaty.
uncitral.org/uncitral/en/unc … ntion.html
because Taiwan is in that unusual state-no-state status, I forget whether it’s signed the treaty.
FYI, the treaty is basically like:
a. You go to X to arbitrate at Arbitration Centre. Arbitrator awards in favour of you. You take the award to Court in X to get it “validated”.
b. You then take the validated award to Y where the counterparty or assets are. You ask the court in Y to enforce the award.
c. But if Y doesn’t have a treaty with X, Y may ignore your award that you got in X.
I’m sure you can pm MT and I for specific questions, because as you can see, these questions are fact-specific, so what I’ve written are general guidelines.