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ALRUD Law Firm | October 2022

In the course of regular updates on Russian counter-sanctions measures, we would like to provide you with summarized information on: new Official Clarifications published[1] by the Ministry of Finance on October 14, 2022; and new Presidential Decree No. 737 published on October 15, 2022. The above have hugely updated the current counter-sanction FDI regime in Russia, in particular, new transactions requiring counter-sanctions approval were added (e.g ...

Plesner | August 2016

Zoetis, the animal health company, has acquired Danish biotech company Scandinavian Micro Biodevices for USD 80 million (approximately DKK 533 million). Plesner assisted Zoetis with the transaction. Zoetis Inc. has acquired Scandinavian Micro Biodevices ApS for the purpose of extending its pipeline of veterinary diagonistics products ...

Shoosmiths LLP | February 2016

With the use of zero-hours contracts 'ZHCs' increasing and new regulations in this area coming into effect, employers should ensure compliance with the new rules. Background Since our previous article, the Exclusivity Terms in Zero Hours Contracts (Redress) Regulations 2015 (the 'Regulations') came into force on 11 January 2016 ...

Shoosmiths LLP | March 2023

Today (1 March 2023) is Zero Discrimination Day. The aim of the day is to promote equality and end all forms of discrimination. The day should serve as a reminder to employers on how they can identify, prevent and tackle discrimination. It is true that change within an organisation starts from the top and employers should be keen to build a culture of trust where employees feel comfortable raising concerns ...

ALTIUS/Tiberghien | November 2012

FAQ on the Belgian Pre-Contractual Information in the Framework of Commercial Co-operation Agreements Act of 19 December 2005.Belgium has a specific legal regime protecting the economically weaker party in certain commercial partnership agreements (i.e. the Pre-Contractual Information in the Framework of Commercial Co-operation Agreements Act of 19 December 2005 – “the Act”) ...

Shoosmiths LLP | November 2022

Direct marketing by email is a keystone for many businesses. It can be efficient and effective: but are you confident you are getting it right? Getting it wrong can cost customer goodwill and see the regulator knocking at the door. On 17 October the UK data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), issued new guidance on electronic mail for direct marketing purposes which should be helpful for companies trying to do the right thing ...

Shoosmiths LLP | March 2021

In a recent case, the High Court took the opportunity to restate the law on misrepresentation and the importance of demonstrating that an innocent party has actually relied on a misrepresentation. In Leeds City Council and others v Barclays Bank PLC and another [2021] EWHC 363 (Comm), the High Court preferred the Defendant’s interpretation of the applicable test and struck out the Claimants’ claims for misrepresentation ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2021

Application of the exemption method conditional on fulfillment of requirements with regards to ownership fraction and period The Norwegian rules regarding participation exemption have in general entailed that companies tax resident in Norway investing in companies tax resident in the UK have benefited from participation exemption rules with regards to dividends and capital gains on such shares, and the same has been the case for UK companies investing in Norwegian companies ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2020

2020 has been a year of new challenges and uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite these turbulent times, the Norwegian real estate market has remained relatively stable and strong. According to the last known reports and statistics, we see a total transaction value that has surpassed NOK 51 billion in 2020, compared to NOK 100 billion in 2019. The project finance facilitators remain more active than ever ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2023

After an extremely busy 2021 where the financial markets and the lending sector recovered rapidly from the COVID-hibernation, 2022 has been a turbulent year that did not live up to expectations in terms of activity. With geopolitical unrest, high inflation and rising interest rates as the backdrop, financial markets were volatile and funding costs increased substantially ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2021

General Since the European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS) was introduced in 2010, several legislative acts have been adopted in the EU without being incorporated into the EEA-agreement.  This is mainly due to Norwegian constitutional issues. These constitutional issues were resolved in 2018, and as result, a huge backlog of EU legislative acts needs to be incorporated into the EEA-agreement and transposed into Norwegian law ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2021

To avoid a complete halt in critical functions in society, the government proposed a new law, the Corona Law, which provided the government with the authority to give regulations that were contradictory to statutory law. The most prominent feature on the field of litigation was the court’s new ability to decide that an oral hearing should be held by the use of videoconference. Furthermore, the Supreme Court also showed their ability to adapt quickly to the new situation ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2021

After a hectic first quarter, the focus shifted dramatically after the lockdown in mid-March. Within a few days, we went from negotiating new financings within most industries to assisting our clients with urgent waivers and liquidity loans. After the initial chaotic period, we have, however, seen a more normalized period with considerable activity where strong companies and good projects have been able to obtain new financings on acceptable terms ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2021

Trends IT contracts An increasing number of clients have requested aid in purchasing either cloud service technology or offering cloud services to the market. We have seen a significant shift from on-premise solutions (i.e. local servers on customer premises) to public cloud and multi-tenant cloud solutions. Initially, customers pushed suppliers to offer cloud solutions. Now we see the opposite: suppliers pushing customers (who are not always ready for this) into the cloud ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2021

The transaction pace and volume of 2021 was the silver lining of the Covid-19 overcast, keeping our clients and us busy and productive. Particularly the container ship market has been steaming hot, with rapidly increasing prices and high transaction volume. The bulker market has also seen the highest prices for the last decade, with correspondingly high transaction volume ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2021

The first half of 2021 was marked by the highest level of commercial real estate transactions ever. The latest reports and statistics show that this trend has continued in the last six months, and the total transaction volume is likely to exceed NOK 130-150 billion. This surpasses the record year of 2015, when the total transaction volume for commercial real estate was NOK 129 billion. The pandemic caused increased use of home office ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2022

First of all, we are proud of Jan Magne Langseth and Christian Reusch who assisted Bank Norwegian in a principle matter before the Supreme Court of Norway between Ikano Bank et al versus Bank Norwegian. The case concerned the use of competitor’s brands in key word advertising on Google ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2022

Media DNS-blocking of gaming sites proposal The Ministry of Culture submitted a proposal on 21 September 2021, which seeks to give the Norwegian Gambling Authority cause to force ISPs to enforce DNS blocking of unlicensed gaming sites that market their services to Norwegian players ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2022

The Supreme Court ended the «Google Ads» case saga The Supreme Court’s recent ruling (14 December 2021) in a case brought by several competing banks against Bank Norwegian ends a many-year-long saga concerning the use of competitors’ trademarks in search engine advertising. The competitors’ brought the case against Bank Norwegian before the Oslo City Court in 2017 ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2021

Record number of fines in 2021 At European level, a record number of fines have been issued during 2021 for violating the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since the GDPR entered into force in the EU on 25 May 2018, the supervisory authorities have imposed or notified fines in approx. 900 cases with an accumulated amount of approx. EUR 1.3 billion. As many as 500 of these cases are from 2021 with accumulated fines of as much as EUR 1 ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | January 2022

Gap between buyers’ and sellers’ valuation In the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the transactions market slowed down, and many drew similarities to the M&A and IPO markets in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. In March 2020, many deals were aborted or shelved as buyers’ and sellers’ price expectations did not meet. The uncertainty of the pandemic led to the traditional tools for bridging valuation gaps between parties being rendered useless ...

Simonsen Vogt Wiig AS | December 2021

We have in 2021 seen a remarkable (continued) recovery in the Norwegian financial market. This is also evident from the perspective of our banking and financing team. We have assisted our clients with a considerable number of new financings and refinancings, across most sectors.  It has especially been hectic within the shipping, aviation and renewable energy sectors and we have seen a steep increase within acquisition financing ...

As the end of another tax year approaches, now is a good time to consider your financial position and check whether you have taken full advantage of the tax reliefs and exemptions that are available. This note is intended to provide a brief guide to the opportunities that we believe may be worth considering. There are many tax-saving measures available and we detail below a number of steps that can be taken to improve your tax position, without significant effort ...

Until recently there was a significant amount of confusion and uncertainty on whether or not it is trade mark infringement for a search engine to allow certain 'keywords' to be sponsored by a third party who is not the trademark owner. The above scenario was encountered in the recent case of Wilson v Yahoo UK Limited where Mr Wilson was the owner of several Community trade marks under the name 'Mr Spicy' ...

Shoosmiths LLP | August 2023

Dan Sharman and Craig Thomas take a look at the tax treatment of salary sacrifice arrangements. Background HMRC has always had a difficult relationship with salary sacrifice arrangements. On the one hand it acknowledges that such arrangements are a legitimate way of employees and employers reducing their tax liability, whilst on the other hand it has looked for ways in which to reduce the amount of tax leakage occurring from such arrangements ...

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