Recent developments in health and safety law will affect all those involved in offshore renewables projects, which are very much in focus following the Crown Estate’s announcement of Round 3 awards in early January. However, the new rules do bring clarity and consistency for those working in the sector and bring offshore health and safety regulation in line with onshore projects ...
During negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, it was suggested that sometimes "we all have to jump together". Having read through the Local Government and Communities Committee Report published on 28th January 2010 following an inquiry into Local Government Finances, this quote has particular resonance. While there is perhaps nothing new in the report, it is certainly timely as local government works its way through the budget setting exercise for 2010/11 ...
One of the main talking points in the energy sector in recent months has been concerned with 'getting smart metering right'. But what is it about smart metering that businesses in particular have to 'get right'? To start, smart metering is not new – a number of countries have already been using it for different purposes. For example, in Italy, one of the motivating factors was to improve customer payment for energy ...
Dear Sirs, On November 27, 2009 the Order of the Federal Service on Financial Markets dated August 13, 2009 ¹ 09-33/pz-n “On peculiarities of the procedure of maintaining the register of registered securities’ holders by the issuers of registered securities” (hereinafter the “Order”) came into force ...
Dear Sirs, On December 31, 2009 the provisions of the Federal Law No ...
Interest rates have remained at an all time low of 0.5% for 10 months in a row and the Bank of England is continuing with its quantitative easing programme. It has been upped to a £200bn asset purchase programme to increase the money in the UK’s financial system and boost bank lending. Meanwhile, total government debt is projected to rise to £1.4 trillion, nearly doubling to 80% of GDP ...
A costly mistake by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has highlighted the importance of careful drafting to ensure access to a software program’s source code. The source code is the line of code in which the software is written, in language intelligible to a suitably trained software developer. Through the use of a compiler, the source code is converted to object code which forms the software program ...
We would like to present you an overview of the most valuable changes in Tax legislation effective since January 1, 2010. Also we would like to point out the recently adopted Decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitrazh Court of the Russian Federation significant from the tax standpoint ...
On January 1, 2010 the Federal law “On amendment the Federal Law “On the employment of the population in the Russian Federation” (hereinafter – the “Law”) came into force. The Law provides for the equal rights to the dismissed citizens, who worked under employment contract with individual entrepreneurs and to those who were dismissed from legal entities ...
Buyers and sellers often have different views on how much a target is worth and how its value should best be determined. Normally, the valuation of a company is based on both its past performance and its projected future performance. While the seller may be confident of the company's future growth, the buyer may be reluctant to assume the risk of the company failing to perform as expected by paying the seller the whole purchase price upfront ...
A raft of new legislation outlined in the Queen's Speech has been predictably derided as being unachievable in the limited parliamentary time available before the election. However, the Government's Digital Economy Bill which was published last week, appears to have a certain amount of cross party support and may therefore make it to the statute book ...
Is a recession good for innovation? History seems to suggest that it may be and numerous notable inventions have emerged from recessions, for example James Dyson's vacuum came out of the last recession in the 1990s. Innovation is a key priority for the Scottish Government in these difficult times and politicians have described innovation as "essential" to create a more successful Scotland through sustainable economic growth ...
With the current recessionary climate there has been a significant increase in redundancies and other dismissals. This has led to an inevitable increase in the use of compromise agreements whereby an employee signs a document agreeing not to bring particular employment or contractual claims in exchange for a financial settlement.Here we look at some of the key issues in considering how termination payments could be structured ...
On 1 September 2009, the long-anticipated Social Security Agreement between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of India (the “SSA”) entered into force. The SSA was signed in New Delhi on 3 November 2006 and is considered as a landmark agreement as it was the first treaty of its kind to be signed by the Indian authorities. Therefore it is likely to serve as a benchmark for similar agreements between India and other countries ...
by Oleh I. Furmanchuk, Associate with AstersAccording to the 2008 Yearly Report of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the "AMCU"), 658 cases regarding anticompetitive actions of bodies of power were investigated by the AMCU and its bodies in 2004-2008. In 2008, the AMCU investigated 215 such cases, demonstrating a 17.5% increase compared to the previous year (there were 183 cases in 2007) ...
In our final procurement update of 2009 we report on two important administrative changes: new advertising thresholds, and new OJEU notices. New advertising thresholds published These will apply for two years from 1 January 2010. As predicted, because Sterling has been so weak against the Euro, the Sterling thresholds have actually gone up significantly (meaning slightly fewer contracts will be caught by the full Regulations) ...
In its Sea Judgement of 10 September 2009 (C-573/07), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) further clarifies its “in-house” jurisprudence. More specifically, it goes more deeply into the notion of control ...
In Belgium, contracting agreements are subject to the Belgian Civil Code (‘BCC’) plus several other regulations. In this article, we briefly discuss five rules which foreign investors or principals may be surprised apply to Belgian contracting agreements. Make sure you avoid these pitfalls!1 ...
Born from the free movement provisions of the EU, and reflecting UK Government efficiency objectives, the procurement rules are aimed at ensuring equal treatment and opportunity when public authorities contract for works, goods and services by requiring, in broad terms, a publicised tender process. However, disgruntled bidders have not had a happy hunting ground when seeking to challenge a suspected defective procurement exercise before the courts ...
The Acoset judgment of the ECJ dated 15 October 2009 (C-196/08) was related to a dispute about an institutionalised public-private partnership (IPPP). A local authority wanted to grant a concession to a newly-created semi-public company, whose minority shareholder would be a private company selected by an open tender procedure. The minority shareholder would be responsible for the operations of the semi-public company ...
In the Horizon Pleiades case, the Council of State was confronted with an interesting question: if a public authority organises a procedure to select its partner for a PPP company, which will perform works or services which would normally be covered by the Procurement Directives, does the selection procedure have to comply with the rules laid down in the Procurement Directives or can a “light” selection procedure be used? In its ruling, dated 19 June 2009, the Council of Stat
We would like to draw your attention to the upcoming valuable updates in Tax legislation. Below we have placed a short overview of the hottest issues already occurred in Russian tax environment and some to be introduced in the nearest future. Respectively, these incentives are proposed either to overcome consequences of the financial crisis, or to realize the next step of the long-term policy of stabilization and modernization of the Russian tax system ...
At the same time, the effective rate of tax on dividends for high earners will rise from 25% to 36%. No changes are currently proposed to the rate of capital gains tax which means it will remain at 18%. However, both main parties have now admitted that further tax increases are likely. With the gap between income tax and capital gains being a massive 32%, it seems unlikely that the current generous rate of capital gains tax will remain in place ...
When a company goes into administration, a statutory moratorium takes effect to help the administrators achieve the objectives of the administration. Amongst other things this means that no legal process can be started or continued against the company without the consent of the administrators or the court ...
On October 7, 2009 the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted in the first reading the draft of the Federal law on amending legislation regarding land plots ...
