The season of goodwill is upon us, with retailers and the press announcing Christmas charity partnerships to raise funds for good causes, but the cost-of-living crisis will still be with us in 2023. Charities are increasingly feeling a greater level of pressure to be the first line of defence as gaps in public services open up and they face a “triple threat” of increasing running costs (in particular, energy bills), rising service demand, and falling incomes ...
Financial Services Exposure draft on licensing framework for digital insurers and takaful operators Amendment to the Guidelines on Recognised Markets Guidelines on Islamic Capital Market Products and Services
Trine Vabog is affiliated with the TMT team in Oslo. Trine is among Norway’s leading IT lawyers and works with complex ICT procurements and ICT contracts from both the customer as well as the provider side. She has a deep understanding and expertise within the ICT area, considerable experience as a project manager and negotiation manager for ICT acquisitions and advises parties within both public and private sectors ...
January 2022 began with the announcement that businesses and corporations will be subject to Corporate Tax (CT) from 1 June 2023. While the UAE Ministry of Finance helpfully provided information on the basic tenets of CT, including a comprehensive white paper, the CT Law governing CT was published on 9 December 2022 providing clarity. However, there are still a number of areas that will be further clarified through the implementing regulations ...
Over the past few weeks, the European Union has issued somewhat of a landmark act which is aimed at addressing the topical issue surrounding the lack of women in top-level corporate positions ...
In this case the debtor argued the underlying debt was disputed. The Royal Court agreed with Carey Olsen that a claim is not disputed for the purposes of a creditors’ winding up application unless it is the subject of a “substantial dispute”. New regime On 1 March 2022 a new creditor instigated insolvent company winding-up regime came into force in Jersey. Carey Olsen discussed it in detail here ...
The past two years have seen significant growth in the number of mergers and acquisitions nationwide with many agriculture and farming business owners choosing to liquefy their assets and move on. At the same time, employers have had to cope with numerous challenges that have made the task of hiring and preparing I-9s for new employees more difficult. Some employers (unlawfully) stopped preparing I-9s for new hires altogether ...
The Norwegian Bar Association’s law committees are appointed by the association’s executive board. The committees consist of members with particular expertise within the selected field. The committees follow legislation developments closely and advise within their special field of expertise. With a focus on the rule of law and quality in legislation the Bar Association’s law committees deliver around 80 statements every year ...
On December 13th, 2022, Decree No. 84 was published in the Official Gazette approving the Regulations governing mediation, conciliation, and arbitration in consumer matters, which will enter into force six months after publication, that is, on June 23rd, 2023. The issuance of this regulation is framed in the recent entry into force of the Pro-Consumer Law that seeks to encourage consumer protection ...
Kudun and Partners represented Altitude Development Co., Ltd., one of Thailand’s leading real estate development, in the offering of newly issued shares to Lotus Global Investment, a foreign PE fund, representing 12.49 percent of its total issued share capital, with a transaction value of THB 500 million (approximately USD 13.8 million). This transaction is an important milestone prior to the client’s initial public offering in the Stock Exchange of Thailand ...
One of the common complaints that commercial entities have about international arbitration in Thailand is the costs. Whilst in the past, international arbitration has been promoted as being cheaper than court litigation, in practice this has not always been the case, particularly in the case of complex commercial disputes or investor state arbitration. Third party funding can dramatically change this landscape ...
Companies face the loss of a major tax break on research and experimental ("R&E") costs for 2022, absent Congressional action. Since 1954, Internal Revenue Code section 174 has allowed taxpayers to immediately deduct R&E costs. Effective January 1, 2022, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("TCJA") amended section 174 to eliminate the deduction of R&E costs. Instead, costs for R&E activities in the U.S ...
With office attendance down and face to face events less frequent, the ability to meet and network with industry peers has been somewhat stymied in recent years. This is particularly true for the in-house lawyer community who, having worked through a period of sustained legislative, societal, economic and regulatory change, have arguably been one of the groups to have suffered the most from the inability hear how other IHLs across the industry have managed these challenges ...
Just weeks after the “implosion” of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, credit services provider BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 protection with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, indicating that it is burdened with billions of dollars of estimated liabilities and more than 100,000 creditors ...
Here’s the Scenario: After months of working with a new developer client (and providing hours of unreimbursed value engineering) and hard negotiations over the cost plus GMP contract (fighting over indemnity/escalation/savings/liquidated damage clauses), you have a deal. You pop a cork with all involved since the developer has said this is one of many future projects. Your very patient subcontractors have held their prices ...
Jeremy Hunt’s speech on 9th December heralds the (delayed) arrival of the anticipated reform of consumer credit in the UK…and much more. But will the fanfare live up to the industry’s expectations? The financial services sector have faced unprecedented challenges over the last few years, particularly those involved in the provision of consumer credit ...
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) [1] entered into force on 1 November 2022. A business that considers the platform it uses will likely be designated as a ‘gatekeeper’ and that the platform’s rules/behaviour are unfair can take certain steps now [2]. Q1 2023 to Q2 2023 - Engage with the platform to change its rules/behaviour ...
Meta continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons in the data protection field as this week the Irish data regulator, the DPC fined the tech company €265 million ($275 million) for infringements of Articles 25(1) and 25(2) GDPR. It is nothing new that Meta pushes data protection boundaries ...
As the Procurement Bill has made its way through Parliament, there has been much talk of giving 'smaller companies a bigger slice of the procurement pie'. It remains to be seen if, and to what extent, the relevant proposed amendments to the Bill are retained in the final version of the legislation. However, what is striking is the significant challenges many SMEs would continue to face in the event of a breach (or suspected breach) of the procurement rules ...
Since the introduction of the second Payment Services Directive, Open Banking has continued to grow in the UK. Estimates put the number of users at 5 million[1] and, more so than ever, there is confidence that Open Banking initiatives are finally making inroads into becoming embedded within the way in which UK consumers use financial services in the UK ...
The EU revenue cap which limits certain electricity generators' revenues has raised many questions within the energy sector. In Finland, the revenue cap will likely be implemented in the form of a temporary windfall tax which would apply to profits made in 2023. Our energy team's associate Nelli Rönkkö has summarised the key points regarding the implementation of the EU revenue cap in Finland ...
Looking back on 2022, what were some of the major events/trends that impacted the work you did as an offshore law firm? Do you see these impacts being felt going into 2023? Anthony McKenzie (AM): 2021 was a blockbuster year for many offshore law firms in Asia. Booming deal flow saw revenues and profits surge. In order to service their clients, law firms increased their headcount. Fast forward to 2022 and beyond and the economic outlook is very different ...
On 1 January 2023, the BVI Business Companies Act, 2004 will be amended by the: (1) BVI Business Companies (Amendment) Act, 2022; and (2) the BVI Business Companies (Amendment) Regulations, 2022 (together the “Amendments”). The Amendments will impact all companies incorporated or registered in the BVI (“Companies”) ...
