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In a recent series of cases, HMRC has successfully argued that amounts paid to managers under a remuneration planning arrangement should be subject to income tax as "miscellaneous income". In HMRC v BlueCrest Capital Management LP and other, we now have the Court of Appeal's take on the issue, and it too has supported HMRC's view. 

Welcome to the latest edition of our quarterly disputes newsletter, which covers key developments in the dispute resolution world over the last three months or so.

At the time of our last COP28 update, we were still waiting to hear what the outcomes would be from several key discussion areas that remained open, including the results of the first Global Stocktake ("GST").

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2023 has been a year marked by high inflation and high borrowing costs, which have increased prices and caused uncertainty in the real estate market. Meanwhile, the Government has kept Parliament busy with a range of new legislation, much of which affects the built environment and investment into it.

A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry. 

The UK government has announced far-reaching changes to the UK's immigration system which are set to be introduced in Spring 2024 as part of a five-point plan. These announcements follow the release of the net migration numbers at the end of November 2023 which showed levels were at an all-time high.

After many months of speculation and preparation, COP28 got underway last week in Dubai. As set out in our article prior to COP28 commencing, the conference comes at a crucial time in collective international efforts to tackle the climate crisis, with King Charles emphasising in his address to the conference that "COP28 will be another critical turning point towards genuine transformational action".

Introduction

SDR is widely seen as the UK's answer to the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which is currently under review by the European Commission (in fact, we understand that the Commission has an eye on SDR as part of that review). While narrower in scope than SFDR in some respects, it goes further in others insofar as it provides for a set of formal product labels and imposes minimum standards for labelled­ products and non-labelled products that have ESG-related terms in their names (although some will already be familiar with the FCA's ‘Guiding Principles’ for authorised ESG and sustainable investment funds, which sets out expectations in terms of design, delivery and disclosure in relation to such funds).

In Project Angel BidCo Ltd (in administration) v Axis Managing Agency Limited the Commercial Court made clear that to the extent any warranties included in an SPA are identified in an appendix to a W&I policy as being covered (in principle) by the W&I insurer, this remains subject to the wider terms and conditions of the W&I policy including any relevant exclusion clauses.

Travers Smith has written the UK chapter of the Chambers global outsourcing guide.

In a recent decision of the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the panel unanimously decided that three Defendant groups should not be given permission to instruct their own experts in the field of competition economics at trial and were instead given permission to instruct a single joint expert. Initially, the Claimants had not opposed the appointment of separate experts by each of the Defendant groups – the issue had been raised for consideration by the Tribunal itself.

Last month the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in Hotel Portfolio II UK Limited v Ruhan and others [2023] EWCA Civ 1120. This case deals with several, complex legal issues concerning the availability of equitable compensation against an individual who has provided dishonest assistance in a breach of fiduciary duty in circumstances where the breaches of fiduciary duty in question are properly to be categorised as a "single and uninterrupted course of conduct". 

Do the policy changes announced by the UK Government in September mean that it is rowing back on its commitment Net Zero? Anyone wanting to understand the UK's Net Zero ambitions may ask how many plans it takes to switch on a light bulb.

On 26 October 2023, the UK's Energy Act 2023 (the "Act") received Royal Assent, becoming one of the largest pieces of energy legislation in a generation. The Act was originally introduced in July 2022 by then Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng as the 'Energy Security Bill'. The Energy Security Bill was reviewed following the resignation of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss before being re-tabled to the House of Lords on 12 December 2022 under its new name, the Energy Act.

Indirect transfer taxes (or non-resident capital gains taxes) are a key issue on secondary transactions. Generally, this issue can be navigated with a combination of early tax advice and contractual risk allocation between Buyer and Seller.

Since the publication of the Government's 2017 white paper "Fixing our broken housing market", there has been much discussion about the Government's plans to reform the housing market especially by means of modernising the leasehold sector. The King's Speech on 7 November 2023 included further announcements about leasehold reform.