President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (the Act) on March 11, 2021. The Act provides COBRA premium subsidies, increases the tax-exclusion amount for employer-sponsored dependent care assistance programs and expands who may be eligible to receive premium tax credits for marketplace coverage. This alert explains how these provisions may impact your welfare benefit plans. Please contact your Dykema benefits attorney to explore the new provisions in greater depth ...
Republic Act No. 11523, also known as “An Act Ensuring Philippine Financial Industry Resiliency Against the COVID-19 Pandemic” (FIST Act)1, which seeks to assist banks and financial institutions (FIs) in dealing with the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, took effect on February 18, 2021 upon its publication in the Official Gazette and in a newspaper of general circulation ...
Recently, we have seen a flurry of congressional and executive activity on the issue of nondiscrimination in banking. In October 2020, Senators Warren and Booker, along with other Democratic senators, introduced the Fair Access to Financial Services Act of 2020. This bill seeks to prevent discrimination in banking based on “race, color, religion, national origin, and sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity) ...
In February 2020, just prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (Subchapter V) took effect.[1] Subchapter V amends Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code to allow certain individuals and businesses with debts of less than $2,725,625 to file a streamlined Chapter 11 case with the goal to make small business bankruptcies faster and cheaper ...
Over the past month, the SEC has signaled the primacy of ESG in its mission for 2021 and beyond. Seemingly daily, there have been updates regarding ESG initiatives, whether from the Division of Enforcement or the Division of Corporation Finance. This week, it was the Division of Investment Management’s turn ...
This digest is a curated list of Bradley content regarding the coronavirus. In an effort to provide our clients with the easiest way to find information that may be beneficial in responding to the impact of COVID-19, we have provided links to our most recent blog posts, news alerts, webinar recordings and more. Additionally, this digest will now be deployed on a weekly basis in an effort to reduce the number of emails our clients receive ...
Now that we have persevered through one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been written about pandemic fatigue and associated social isolation, mental stress, and anxiety. Employers may be seeing an increase in the incidence of mental illness claims in their workplaces ...
As a reminder to our life sciences clients including drug manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, and group purchasing organizations, all Open Payments data from the 2020 program year must be reported to CMS by no later than March 31, 2021. Organizations that participate in the Open Payments program are also reminded that they must submit a final attestation that their data is timely, complete and accurate in addition to reporting data from fiscal year 2020 ...
As we mentioned last week, the signals coming from the SEC on ESG matters are increasing in volume and significance. On March 15, acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee added two more data points. The first concerned the Division of Corporate Finance’s disclosure program ...
Courts nationwide have struggled for years with the question of when a subjective opinion is false under the False Claims Act. The Supreme Court’s decision to deny review of two cases involving health-care providers that had allegedly submitted false claims for payment based on subjective clinical judgment still leaves us without a uniform, national answer, says Nicholas A. Danella. The U.S ...
On March 11th, 2021, the National Consumer Service (hereinafter “ SERNAC ”) published a new interpretative circular which sets rules for the notification of breaches regarding financial portability and other monitoring data (the “ Circular ”). The Circular revokes SERNAC's Exempt Resolution No ...
On 11 March 2021, the Information Regulator published an invitation to apply for prior authorisation, together with a Guidance Note, on the application for prior authorisation and the form to be used by responsible parties in obtaining such prior authorisation. The invitation to apply for prior authorisation encourages responsible parties to submit their applications as soon as possible ...
On March 9, 2021, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a 45-day extension of the public-comment period for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. OCR first released the NPRM to the public on the HHS website on Dec. 10, 2020, and it was published in the Federal Register on Jan. 21, 2021 ...
On March 10, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), issued updated guidance for nursing homes to resume visitation options during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing homes have been devastatingly effected by COVID-19, with outbreaks causing high rates of infection and death ...
The SEC Division of Examinations issued a Risk Alert on Feb. 26, 2021, providing the Division’s observations made during examinations of investment advisers, broker-dealers and transfer agents regarding digital asset securities. For purposes of the Division, digital asset securities are those digital assets that are securities ...
Asset tokenisation is poised to tear down the high barriers to luxury investments. Imagine you are a whisky aficionado. Having witnessed rare Scotch trounce many investments over the past 10 years, you are eager to jump on the bandwagon. It is, after all, a complementary way to fund an expensive hobby; according to industry watcher Rare Whisky 101’s Rare Whisky Icon 100 Index, UK auction prices of 100 iconic collectors’ bottles have almost quadrupled since 2012 ...
Introduction: On February 7, 2021, the State Council Anti-monopoly Commission (the “Commission”) promulgated the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines for the Platform Economy (the “Guidelines”), following only three months after the State Administration for Market Regulation (“SAMR”) issued an exposure draft of the same on November 10, 2020 (the “Exposure Draft”), which unveiled a more rigorous approach to anti-monopoly regulation ...
Corporate & Commercial Recognition of UK Insolvency Proceedings in Malta Post-BrexitSimon Pullicino comments on the impact of Brexit with respect to cross-border insolvency and the implications for the recognition and enforcement of UK proceedings in Malta and vice-versa ...
In connection with the adoption of a new law on the ethical treatment of clinical trials of medical devices, the Folketing has made a number of changes to the rules on the affiliation and financial support of pharmaceutical and medical companies to healthcare professionals. The amendments will enter into force on 26 May 2021 ...
On 08 March 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commissions (“SEC”) released SEC Memorandum Circular (“MC”) No. 3, series of 2021 to promulgate and provide guidelines on the filing of the audited financial statements (“AFS”), general information sheet (“GIS”), and other annual reports for the year 2021. In the said MC, the SEC announced the mandatory submission of these reports through the SEC’s Online Submission Tool (“OST”) ...
On Wednesday, March 10, 2021, Supreme Decree N° 007-2021-VIVIENDA was published in the Official Gazette “El Peruano”, which established a three-month deadline for the submission of Cofinanced Private Initiatives (“IPC”) on investment projects for sanitation services ...
For those of us in the HUD-insured multifamily finance space who make our living trying to shrink the time period between firm commitment and closing, Chapter 19 of the new Multifamily Accelerated Processing (MAP) Guide was a must-read when it was published at the end of 2020 ...
On February 23, 2021, the Plenary of the Court of Appeals of Santiago agreed to establish a regulation that favors the use of telematic systems and information technology in the various functions performed by notaries, providing instructions for: The use of advanced electronic signature (FEA) by the notary publics (notarios públicos). The authorization of signatures stamped on private instruments, by telematic means ...
FINANCIAL SERVICES BNM announces new funds for SMEs On 5 February 2021, Bank Negara Malaysia ("BNM") announced: an additional RM2 billion for the Targeted Relief and Recovery Facility (“TRRF”); the establishment of a RM200 million Disaster Relief Facility (“DRF”) 2021. TRRF The TRRF was a facility announced in the Budget 2021, established to assist eligible SMEs in the services sector ...
In September 2020, a team of MIT researchers published a paper in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, testing the hypothesis that coronavirus carriers—even asymptomatic ones—could be accurately detected using artificial intelligence (AI) based on only a phone recording of a forced cough.If this hypothesis is correct, the COVID-19 test can be accessible to people worldwide ...
