Legal Briefing

Corporate criminal liability in the UK: is change in the air? | Steptoe & Johnson

In what some have described as a development ‘seismic’ in its potential consequences, in June 2021, the Law Commission launched a consultation concerning proposals to reform corporate criminal liability in the UK. The consultation seeks views on whether, and how, to improve the law relating to the identification and punishment of criminal offences committed by …

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Tax disputes – some predictions for the year ahead | PwC

With public finances under sustained pressure, HMRC will clearly have to collect more tax, more quickly, with stable resource levels, while stimulating economic growth. This will require rapid decision making on what, or who, to pursue, and why. There will be more pressure on tax policy decisions in terms of where to draw the line …

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Tax disputes – discard the Whitebook? | PwC

There are some significant differences in the process of litigation when HMRC is your opponent. Understanding those differences is essential when formulating the strategic approach to the dispute. This is not to say however that commercial litigation practice is of no relevance; increasingly there is a tendency for the tax courts to look to the …

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Compliance programmes and the protection of legal privilege | Steptoe & Johnson

In recent years, financial crime prosecutors have sought to encourage companies to establish compliance programmes designed to avoid – or at least detect – illegal conduct, by including the requirement as a precondition to their securing a reduced penalty, or other form of leniency, following a compliance incident. In responding to those incentives by implementing …

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Moving ethnicity pay gap evaluation from the ‘too difficult’ pile | Eversheds Sutherland

Against a backdrop of Government expressions of support for ethnicity pay reporting in the UK in 2018 and a consultation paper which appeared to favour some form of Government intervention, the lack of any legislative proposals since had been perceived by some as a sign of waning commitment. Immediate reaction to the independent Government Commission …

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Bill of law to enhance the protection of consumer rights: a new data protection authority in Chile | Carey

The current Chilean regulations on data protection, Law No 19,628 on privacy protection (DPL), enacted in 1999, has become outdated and it does not properly regulate new scenarios that the development of legal relationships between participants of an economic system creates.

The Russian M&A market since the outbreak of the global pandemic | VK Partners

Economic environment overview The Russian economy was greatly affected by the global epidemic and the decline in business activity. Economic performance was influenced by the OPEC+ oil pact, the drop in oil prices and the volatility in the dollar exchange rate. However, those difficulties were overcome relatively well, since the government implemented support measures to …

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Spotlight on Germany – the new Digitalization Act | Latham & Watkins

With its enactment of the new German Digitalization Act (GWB10) on 19 January 2021, Germany became one of the first countries to upgrade its statutory toolbox to tackle the (perceived) market power of digital giants. The most prominent tools aim to address behavioural and structural market deficiencies (paras 19(1a), 20(3a)) and ease data access (paras …

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New UK government powers to block deals on national security grounds | Brodies

The National Security and Investment Act 2021 completely overhauls the UK’s approach to government screening of investments. It will create a free-standing regime with unprecedented new government powers to investigate and block acquisitions (of entities or assets) on security grounds. Expected to be in force by the end of the year, the Act could be …

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The Turkish Competition Board and the ice cream war | ELIG Gürkaynak Attorneys-at-Law

The Turkish Competition Board (the Board) decided that several practices of Unilever Sanayi ve Ticaret Türk AŞ (Unilever) amounted to infringement of Article 4 and Article 6 of the Law No 4054 on the Protection of Competition (Law No 4054). 1