For the second time in three years, amendments to the False Claims Act have been proposed in the U.S. Senate. If enacted, the amendments would create uncertainty for FCA defendants and expand the scope of the FCA’s anti-retaliation provision to cover post-employment retaliation. In late July, a group of senators proposed the False Claims Amendments Act of 2023.[1] Championed by Sen ...
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) proposed changes to the Hart-Scott Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act (“HSR”) and to the Premerger Notification and Report Form (“Form”) required to be filed by companies with the FTC or Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“Agencies”) for their review of certain proposed transactions with a value in excess of $63.4 million (the current size of the transaction threshold) ...
On 31 January 2024, the UK government will bring into force HM Treasury’s proposed reforms to the financial promotion rules. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (FPO) contains restrictions on the issue of communications which amount to “promotions” of investments in securities ...
The MFSA published a Consultation Document on proposed amendments to the Insurance Business Act (hereinafter referred to as the “IBA”) and the Insurance Distribution Act (hereinafter referred to as the “IDA”) on the 22nd of February. The MFSA also made available the draft legislation, as well as a podcast laying down the proposed amendments ...
“We consider that the Competition Act, 2002 captures the bulk of the anti-competitive practices which the Groceries Order was originally designed to prevent. However, we consider it desirable to significantly strengthen the Act in some respects and particularly to specially prohibit resale price maintenance, unfair discrimination and “hello money”. Such provisions will, henceforth, be enforced by the Competition Authority ...
On 30 August 2023, the Beneficial Ownership Transparency Bill, 2023 (the Bill) was published, proposing several important changes to the beneficial ownership regime in the Cayman Islands. The Bill is intended to enhance the jurisdiction’s current beneficial ownership regime to ensure compliance with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force ...
The Commission has adopted, on 11 June 2013, a proposal for a Directive on damages actions for the infringement of EU and national competition laws. If adopted by the EU legislator, the Directive would require the EU Member States to enact implementing legislation within a two year period. Although the groundbreaking features of the proposal make its final adoption uncertain, such adoption would have enormous implications for private competition damages actions within the EU ...
Following the implementation of significant restrictions on the ability to hire personnel from staffing enterprises, the scope of discretion available to employers in terms of temporary staffing has become a central issue. One important exception to the prohibition against temporary staffing is found in the so-called specialist exception ...
by Igor Shevchenko and Michael Kharenko, Shevchenko Didkovskiy & Partners The need for corporate governance regulation evolved as Ukraine gained its independence and began its transformation to a market economy. Privatisation of state companies has led to their reorganisation into joint stock companies with a diverse ownership base ...
It’s well known that product shapes can be registered as trade marks. The South African Trade Marks Act, for example, has a very wide definition of the term ‘mark’, and this includes words, colours, numbers, patterns, ornamentation and shape. Yet it’s also well known that product shape trade marks are difficult ...
Following the first reading of the Procurement Bill in the House of Lords, Shoosmiths considers how this will change public procurement as we know it. The Government has recently taken the next step in its plan to transform public procurement, by publishing the Procurement Bill (‘the Bill’). The first reading in the House of Lords took place on 11 May 2022 and we can now start to consider the changes this Bill will bring ...
As a young lawyer, you might be struggling to believe that you can make a difference and to figure out how to do so. You might also be wondering how to gain the courtroom experience seemingly necessary to build a legal practice. If either of these is true, consider how pro bono litigation has impacted our legal system and could impact your career. Even if you read no further, take this advice: volunteer for pro bono cases. In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S ...
The key issue before the formal body of advisers to the UK sovereign was whether the trustee of a settlement “exercised for a proper purpose” an express power contained in the trust deed to add and exclude discretionary objects, having added a purpose trust as an object and removed all family members comprising the entire class of objects. The Background The trust settlors were two brothers who founded Formosa Plastics Group, one of the largest business conglomerates in Taiwan ...
This article considers why private trust companies are currently so popular, various structuring issues which those setting up private trust companies should take into consideration, and the private trust companies regulations which came into force in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in August 2007 and which were amended in 2013. Introduction Private trust companies (PTCs) have become increasingly popular offshore in the last 20–25 years ...
Kochhar & Co. Senior Partner, Suhas Srinivasiah, and Principal Associate, Ajay G Prasad, have co-authored the India chapter of the ‘Private Mergers & Acquisitions’ published by Practical Law, Thomson Reuters. The paper provides a holistic view of the M&A law in India and recent trends in the private M&A space” ...
Beginning January 1, 2024, companies created or registered in the United States will have to report information about their ownership to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, pursuant to The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA” or the “Act”). For more information, see our prior alert on this topic here ...
In the latest development in the Sun Capital litigation, following remand by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, on March 28, 2016, the Federal District Court of Massachusetts found Sun Capital Partners III, LP and Sun Capital Partners III QP, LP (collectively, “Sun Fund III”) and Sun Capital Partners IV, LP (“Sun Fund IV,” and together with Sun Fund III, the “Sun Funds”) liable for the withdrawal liability of Scott Brass Holding Corp ...
On October 14, 2021, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office announced a $25 million healthcare fraud settlement against a private equity firm and former executives of the firm’s portfolio company. The settlement is significant because it is the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the country to date against a private equity firm based on the firm’s oversight of its healthcare portfolio company ...
The purpose of this article is to provide a short update as to the legal and policy developments in the area of private enforcement of competition law. Regulatory scrutiny and judicial developments continue to be principally focussed on the issue of follow-on damages actions for infringements of competition law, especially in the cartel arena. However, as can be seen in the English High Court's recent judgement in SanDisk Corporation vs ...
February’s Supreme Court ruling in Bloomberg confirmed that those under criminal investigation have a right, enforceable in the civil courts, to prevent publication of their identity until the moment they are charged. In this short article Gordon Downie, Partner in our regulation and markets team, considers some questions about the implications of Bloomberg, in particular for regulatory investigations ...
By: Jeffrey M. Dennis Data privacy, sometime referred to as the protection of personal information, has developed into one of the most significant challenges facing the franchise industry. As the number of franchises in the United States continues to increase, franchisees and franchisors are becoming more reliant on customer information to grow and maintain their loyal customer bases ...
As soon as we began to shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 crisis, most of us also started to hold virtual meetings, both professional and personal, as a better, more satisfying way to connect. For this, we turned en masse to a handful of video conferencing platforms. However, while we can all agree that these services help us do our jobs and stay in touch with loved ones, these services raise many novel privacy and security concerns ...
