Arbitration clauses are not your typical boilerplate. It is the final bastion of hope before parties refer to an unknown arbiter of court, a stranger to your business arrangement, to make a final and binding determination on your commercial dispute. Especially in cross-border business ventures, this often results in costly and lengthy breakdowns in profitable relationships, further aggravated by many aspects of litigation that are out of parties’ control when left to national courts, like privacy and neutrality.

In this series, we aim to inform our readers of the various issues that should be considered when contemplating arbitration. The guide gives you a snapshot comparative analysis of these issues across ASEAN, so that you are better positioned to make key decisions when sculpting your arbitration agreement at the inception of your business relationship, and more importantly at crunch time when an arbitrable dispute arises.