Welcome to the hurricane

It has been a turbulent few years for many of those in the upper echelons of Brazilian politics and business. Around the world, headlines have been filled with sleazy tales of corruption, perhaps most notably the bribery and kickback scandal emanating from state-backed oil giant Petrobras, embroiling many high-profile individuals and entities across the region.

Trust me, I’m a lawyer…

Academic and Thinkers50 honouree Rachel Botsman is focused on trust. Of late, that focus has looked at how technology has shifted our understanding of trust and impacted on both our personal and professional lives.

Financing corporate legal costs: self-finance vs outside backing

In the course of Burford Capital’s nearly nine years in business and in talking to hundreds of lawyers about financing fees and disbursements associated with commercial litigation and arbitration, it has been our experience that quantifying and comparing the relative costs and benefits of financing models is the most effective way to talk to clients …

Regulators Struggle to Raise the Standard of Care for Financial Advice | Clifford Chance US LLP

Legal Briefing

On March 15, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (“Fifth Circuit”) in a 2-1 decision vacated the Obama-era U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) Fiduciary Rule (“Fiduciary Rule”), which responded to a historical shift from traditional pension plans to individually managed accounts, such as individual retirement accounts (“IRAs”) and 401(k)s. The Fiduciary …

The Hot Topic in United States M&A – Corwin | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Legal Briefing

Introduction The general question of corporate governance can be summarized, in the context of public companies, as three interrelated questions:  who has decision-making authority; how are they constrained in the exercise of that authority; and how are they held accountable for that exercise?  In this model, the U.S. approach to corporate governance has historically been …

Delivering complex projects: competitive dialogue or competitive procedure with negotiation? | Gowling WLG

Legal Briefing

The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR) (which implemented the 2014 Public Procurement Directive) created a new procedure known as competitive procedure with negotiation (CPN). For those bidding on complex infrastructure projects or other government contracts, the implications of CPN may not be immediately apparent. For a contracting authority, CPN provides an additional procurement option giving …

Property transactions – the fertiliser for the development of contract law

Legal Briefing

There is a fundamental tension between the desire for contractual certainty and for agreements to be future proof. Property lawyers know only too well the difficulties associated with the fact neither we or our clients have crystal balls or the ability to time travel. We are regularly asked to look at a contract in a …