Winter 2020

The assessment of bad faith in French trade mark proceedings | Lavoix

Recent case law has shown that bad faith is a continually evolving concept whose assessment can lead either to the cancellation or to the transfer of trade mark applications registered in bad faith. In 2019, French courts notably cancelled important French trade marks such as ‘Vente-privee‘ and ‘Laguiole‘ on the basis of their applicant’s bad …

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Corporate governance: trends in Mexico | Deloitte Legal

In Mexico, corporate governance best practices have been part of the business environment for the last 20 years. Since 1999, following the OECD Principles (which in turn used the recommendations of the Cadbury Report to varying degrees), the first voluntary Mexican Best Corporate Practices Code (CMPC), issued by the Mexican Business Co-ordinator Council was published. …

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2020 vision: minimising financial crime risk in US/UK M&A | Greenberg Traurig

The spread of criminal and regulatory laws into the corporate world has been underscored by a string of cases in the US and, more recently, the UK sparked by M&A activity. As a result, our transatlantic white collar crime defence and investigations group has seen an uptick in advising buyers and sellers on corporate transactions …

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Outsourcing legal teams – Will it ever be more than flavour of the month?

It’s not often a FTSE 100 GC and a law firm offer themselves up to the media to discuss a deal. Even panel review stories rarely elicit comment beyond a few contrived lines about ‘innovation’, ‘alignment’ and ‘deeper relationships’. So when BT legal chief Sabine Chalmers and DWF arranged conference calls in the summer to …

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Corruption, procurement and self-cleaning in Denmark | Kammeradvokaten/Poul Schmith

In 2015 Denmark’s image as one of the world’s least corrupt nations came under scrutiny as Atea A/S, the Danish subsidiary of the Norwegian IT supplier Atea ASA, came under investigation for bribing several public officials employed in IT departments of various Danish public authorities, including the national police and the regional authority, Region Zealand. …

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Significant matters – Winter 2020

National Grid drops three from panel BDB Pitmans, Irwin Mitchell and Norton Rose Fulbright have been dropped from National Grid’s panel, understood to be worth about £12m a year in the UK. Womble Bond Dickinson is the sole new appointee on a roster that reduced the number of advisers from 12 to ten. Addleshaw Goddard, …

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The ultimate beneficial owner – the Achilles heel of money laundering? | Mareș & Mareș

Money laundering represents one of the key challenges in the fight against serious crime, especially considering its stealth nature as well as its cross-border dimension. There is an underlying link between money laundering and other crimes, such as corruption offences, human trafficking, drug trafficking or the financing of terrorism. One of the most significant and …

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Heather Mitchell – The Carlyle Group

‘One reason I’m doing this interview is so I can send it to my parents. They’re really important to me. Ah, suddenly, the hard-woman persona crumbles,’ jokes Heather Mitchell, global general counsel (GC) for investments and head of EMEA at The Carlyle Group.

Straight talk: criminal defence and compliance in AML cases | PARK Wirtschaftsstrafrecht White-collar crime

Quotes: ‘Money laundering is for drug dealers and terrorists. We do not have any exposure’; ‘We have never checked against AML lists. Competitors don’t do it. Why would we?’; ‘Lawyers just don’t understand business. That’s just scare tactics’; ‘Yeah, we do have compliance. They don’t generate any revenue’; ‘We here in compliance can preach. But …

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The BT interview – ideas from the bath

The In-House Lawyer (IHL): Eighteen months in the group general counsel role, what have been some of the key projects you’ve been doing since you landed? The wider business has been through a lot of transformation, how is legal keeping up? Sabine Chalmers (SC), group GC, BT: When I joined Gavin Patterson was my boss. …

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Greece’s new breach of trust offence: key issues for boards | Ioannis Giannidis Law Firm

‘Breach of trust’, an equivalent to ‘Untreue’, ‘abus de confiance‘ or ‘abuse of position’, is a typical white-collar crime in Greece and the main source of criminal liability risk for the boards of directors (BoDs), CEOs and other officers holding a position of trust within a corporation. Hence, the recent amendments to the actus reus …

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The greater good

Matthew Scully, Clifford Chance: There are two things that I wanted to touch on: first, whether there is such a thing as a good culture – I would say there is no one good corporate culture for all businesses but there are perhaps some basic common features – and, second, the notion of ‘tone from …

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