Among the many extraordinary measures taken by the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the issuance of blanket waivers of certain provisions of the federal self-referral prohibition commonly known as the Stark Law. The waivers loosen significant restrictions on physician financial relationships in an effort to provide health care providers with greater flexibility to meet the challenges of the pandemic ...
Following announcements during the 2021-22 Budget by the Finance Secretary Paul Chan, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued on 10 May 2021 details of the grant scheme available for Hong Kong open-ended fund companies (OFCs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) ...
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals makes clear that third parties may not sue under the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act for collection attempts On May 17, 2017, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision that affirmed a trial court’s order granting summary judgment to a collector in a lawsuit brought by a third party over collection calls made to her home that were intended to reach another person living there. In Young v ...
When the Supreme Court in 2020 issued its decision in Liu v. SEC, placing limits upon the Securities and Exchange Commission's ability to obtain disgorgement, many observers believed that the decision would significantly diminish the SEC's capability to seek and obtain significant disgorgement recoveries in civil enforcement actions alleging violations of the securities laws ...
As seen in Bank Director Strategic planning is one of the most important roles of a financial institution’s board of directors. Since the 2008 financial crisis, financial institution boards have dealt with the emergence of fintechs as a primary consideration in developing their strategic plans ...
Congress reached agreement on the third round of coronavirus-related relief measures (totaling approximately $900 Billion) as this issue was being written. The relevant statutory language is part of the massive Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the “Act”) and was released on December 21, 2020. Passage by the House and Senate was swift, and approval by the President is expected ...
as published in the Fall 2021 issue of West Virginia Banker magazine As the world (hopefully) comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic later this year, the way we conduct business is changing. The banking industry, described by one commentator as “the most old-school of the old-school professions,” is criticized as being resistant to change. As one article described it, “the fundamental ways that financial institutions function have not changed with the times ...
The world continues to come to grips with the daily changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools contemplate opening. Some do, while others do not. Some professional and college sports teams play games to empty stadiums. Some businesses are open, with restrictions, while others are not. Lawsuits are being filed by businesses that think they should be permitted to reopen like their neighbors who already have ...
Updated on 8 January 2024.Food law is extensively harmonized throughout the EU, but national law still has a role to play. In this short article, we look at three developments in Belgian food law that have taken place in 2023: the amendments to the Food Safety Agency’s administrative fining regime, the introduction of nutrivigilance, and the announced revision of the food hygiene legislation.1 ...
Lauren Bowkett is a fraud and financial crime expert in the Business Crime and Compliance Team at Shoosmiths. She is an expert in confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (‘POCA’) and has successfully intervened in numerous POCA cases to assert her clients third party interest rights ...
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 ...
On 21 July 2016, National Treasury released the third draft of the regulations under the Financial Markets Act, 2012 (the “Third Draft Regulations”). The previous draft of the regulations was released in June 2015. The Third Draft Regulations are, together with pending legislation, aimed at progressing the financial sector reform strategy for South Africa ...
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 ...
At Spilman Thomas & Battle, we talk with lending clients regularly about their collection options against borrowers who have defaulted in their obligations. Many are surprised to learn how varied and wide their toolbox actually is. Debts that look dead in the water may yet have air in the lungs ...
Court decisions regarding company names are rare. So the recent decision of the Western Cape High Court in the case of Bloomberg’s Posterity Investments (Pty) Ltd v The Registrar of Companies and Bloomberg LLP is worth discussing. What makes company name cases interesting from an intellectual property (IP) law point of view is that they deal with issues that are very similar to the issues that are dealt with in trade mark infringement and passing-off cases ...
What happened? Two directors of VTL, a Jersey company, devised a fraudulent scheme. They purported to provide investors with a mechanism to decrease income tax exposure. As it turned out, the scheme was a fraud on the customers. It was also a fraud on VTL: instead of turning over around £4.55 million in proceeds from the scheme to VTL, the directors kept these funds for themselves ...
Perhaps, one of the facts which creates the highest expectations among those of us who manage the second or third defense line is risk materialization. That is to say, for a risk to become an event and generate some kind of impact. And from there on, the possibility of verifying the effectiveness of the controls designed, the residual risk and feeding back the matrix ...
As we continue our series on bankruptcy litigation, we want to discuss the use of receiverships as an important aspect of a fully developed creditors' rights practice. Creditors often face recalcitrant corporate debtors who continue to reap the rewards of their business while ignoring all attempts by creditors to collect amounts owed to them. Sometimes, those debtors' intricate corporate structure makes it harder for creditors to trace money and assets and easier for debtors to hide them ...
What is the CTA? The CTA was enacted on January 1st, 2021 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act to prevent the use of companies to evade anti-money laundering rules or to hide other illegal activities. Under the CTA companies will be required to report information regarding its beneficial owners with a beneficial ownership registry maintained by the United States Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) ...
The $26bn acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft certainly caught the eye this week.A business that is little more than 14 years old and wasn’t generating operating profits (under GAAP) selling for almost ten times revenue – that’s some deal.Yet it doesn’t take a great deal of investigation into some of the non-financial statistics to see why such an eye watering price might be justifiable:LinkedIn has 430 million members and is growing fast ...
An LTAF is a UK authorised fund which offers greater flexibility in terms of assets that it can invest in than other types of UK authorised fund. It has more liquidity than more traditional fund structures such as private equity limited partnerships ...
It is now common knowledge that after January 2, 2022, issuing a cheque that is dishonoured for the lack of funds is no longer going to be a criminal offence in the UAE (for a primer on the changes made to the law, clickHere). But what of ongoing complaints and criminal cases regarding cheques that were dishonoured prior to January 2? Circular No. (9) of 2021, issued by the Dubai Public Prosecution Department on 19 December 2021, helpfully clarifies how such cases are to be handled ...
Introduction The UN Convention on International Bills of Exchange and International Promissory Notes (1988) and the Convention Providing a Uniform Law for Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes (1930), on which legislation throughout the world is modelled, assert the same principle. The assignment of funds is thus rejected as the legal principle underlying the transfer of funds ...
At Christmas, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) consisting of 1256 pages was finally agreed between the EU and the UK. Crucially, the Agreement is between the EU and UK only and not the EU and its member states and the UK. The TCA establishes a free trade area for goods and services, in accordance with the WTO law. Both sides can apply trade remedies as is usual for free trade agreements such as on condition anti-dumping duties, anti-subsidy duties, and economic safeguards ...
