<p>Filter Knowledge</p>

A guide to future employment and immigration law.

A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry. 

This briefing addresses the impact of Brexit, and the end of the transition period, on cross-border disputes.

The UK Government argues that freeports will provide significant customs benefits for businesses - but not everyone agrees. In this briefing, part of a series on UK freeports, we look at the types of business that might benefit from freeport customs arrangements and whether the critics are right to be sceptical.

On 7 September 2021 the government announced the introduction of a new UK-wide Health and Social Care Levy, which will be used to pay for adult social care reforms and enable the NHS to tackle the COVID-19 backlog.

"Sustainable finance" continues to dominate the legal and financial agenda for many asset managers at the moment, driven by multiple factors, including an emphasis on the climate crisis and an influx of legislation, particularly from the European Union, mandating financial organisations to demonstrate their sustainability credentials.

The UK Government has been keen to talk up the potential benefits from a planning perspective of being based in a freeport. But what exactly are these benefits and how significant could they be?

The environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of a business is both a financial matter and an ethical one. As a result, responsible investment is right at the heart of the private equity investment agenda.

Welcome to our ECM H1 update 2021. In 2020 we saw something of a game of two halves: H1 witnessed a huge increase in secondary offerings with issuers racing to raise funds as the pandemic took hold, and H2 saw an unexpected boom in IPO activity.

Although the UK Government has recently announced that certain border requirements are being postponed until the middle of next year, it is currently sticking to its plans to require full customs declarations on goods imported from the EU as of 1 January 2022. This change has the potential to disrupt UK supply chains.

This briefing note, which represents an updated version of an earlier note circulated in September 2020, addresses the impact of Brexit, including the end of the transition period, on matters relevant to civil judicial co-operation between the English courts and the courts of EU member states (and, where relevant, the courts of EFTA^[1] member states).

On 7 September, the UK Government announced the introduction of a new 1.25% levy which is intended to pay for adult social care reforms and enable the country's National Health Service to tackle the COVID-19 backlog. In this briefing we consider the implications this might have for overseas employers.

Shareholders in Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Australia's largest bank, have applied to the Federal Court of Australia to compel the CBA to furnish them with documents pertaining to its decisions to finance certain energy projects. 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation was introduced during 2020 to prevent creditors filing statutory demands and winding up petitions on the basis of their debtor's inability to pay its debts, unless it could be shown that non-payment was not a result of the pandemic. These temporary measures had been extended a number of times during the pandemic as businesses continued to suffer the effects of multiple lockdowns and trading restrictions, but are now gradually being phased out. 

It has been reported that two German NGOs (Greenpeace and Deutsche Umwelthilfe) have written a letter of claim to Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler's Mercedes-Benz and independent oil and gas company Wintershall Dea, alleging that the companies need to put in place measures to reduce their CO2 emissions by 45% (as against 2019 levels) by 2030.

In the last few weeks there have been a number of stories relating to COP26 in the international press; from alarmist headlines of hotel room shortages in Glasgow to calls to reschedule the conference again as a result of COVID-19 restrictions. With COP 26 only 45 days away, we have selected two of the most significant talking points from recent days.

Welcome to the second in our series of podcasts focusing on international employment law. 

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

Key employment and business immigration developments for employers.