Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC,
THSRC received the ruling on Monday from the International Chamber of Commerce, which ordered THSRC to pay compensation to a group led by Germany's Siemens AG and France's Alstom, which had signed a contract with THSRC to provide technology for its high-speed rail system in 1999.
"We are still discussing with our attorneys whether we are going to accept the ruling or appeal," said Edward Lin (
"The ruling will not impact on our construction, which is already 55.66 percent complete ... We won't change our time frame for train testing and launching," Lin said.
The company plans to test the 345km line this September and launch the service in October next year. The first of the passenger cars for the route was unveiled to the public at the end of January in Kobe, Japan.
The debt-ridden THSRC planned to raise NT$21.8 billion by the end of May to support the construction of the high-speed railway, but this deadline may be moved back to September, Lin said.
THSRC shares dropped 5.81 percent to NT$9.4 yesterday on the Emerging Stock Market (
THSRC originally named the Alstom-Siemens consortium its "preferred bidder" in a preliminary 1997 deal to supply core systems including train carriages, locomotives, signalling, electrification, communications and operation control systems.
But THSRC reneged on the US$3.02 billion deal in December 1999, choosing instead a Japanese consortium of seven companies, including Mitsui Corp, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corp, which it said offered a better package in terms of price, financial planning and maintenance. The European consortium also refused to invest in the project, which THSRC said was a factor in its decision.
As a result, the European consortium turned to the New York-based chamber for arbitration in January 2001, and filed a US$800 million civil lawsuit claim against THSRC with the Singapore International Arbitration Center in February that year.
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