Search results for

Thomas Sando One of the changes to the Norwegian Competition Act (the Act) that entered into force on January 1 2014 was the amendments to the leniency scheme available for cartel participants considering blowing the whistle to the Norwegian Competition Authority (the NCA). Under the previous scheme, the conditions for obtaining leniency were hidden in the Leniency Regulation. From January 1, the conditions are included in the new sections 30 and 31 of the Act, dealing with complete and partial leniency respectively. Besides the relocation of the conditions for obtaining leniency, the amended scheme introduces a marker system in line with the system in the EU. This is an improvement, as it will be possible for leniency applicants to initially bring only limited information, yet receive leniency rights from the time of the initial application.

Jeff Bullwinkel, Microsoft's director of legal for the Asia Pacific, explains why a complance benchmark would help assure firms that they can adopt the cloud without flouting the region’s maze of regulations

John Breslin Karole Cuddihy The Irish High Court decision in Ulster Bank Ireland Limited v Dermody (2014) has raised an evidential issue for financial institutions contemplating debt enforcement and possession proceedings. The issue is whether, in proceedings brought by a bank, evidence grounding the proceedings can be given by an officer or employee of a legal entity other than the bank. In a number of cases, the intended deponent will in fact be an employee of a related company (or in some cases an employee of an external service provider), even if they have carried out the day-to-day dealings with the customer. In Dermody, the person who swore the affidavits grounding the application for summary judgment was not an employee of Ulster Bank Ireland Limited (UBIL), but rather of Ulster Bank Limited (UBL), a related company which dealt with the debt collection process of UBIL on its behalf. UBIL was a wholly owned subsidiary of UBL.

Firms are facing hurdles in the race to tap the retail investor market. Debevoise & Plimpton’s Erica Berthou, Jordan Murray and Evan Neu analyse the challenges

Kamraj Nayagam Adam Lee Malaysia's Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA) came into force on April 15 2014. The CIPAA is described as 'an Act to facilitate regular and timely payment, to provide a mechanism for speedy dispute resolution through adjudication, to provide remedies for the recovery of payment in the construction industry and to provide for connected and incidental matters'. The CIPAA applies to construction works carried out wholly or partly within the territory of Malaysia; it relates to any payment disputes and is not limited to interim payments. Section 35 of the CIPAA provides that 'any conditional payment provision in a construction contract in relation to payment under the construction contract is void'. There is a possibility that these provisions will impact contracts in other countries connected to Malaysia.

The lighter side of the past month in the world of financial law

Soonghee Lee The Korean public's attention has recently turned to some scandalous events involving various Korean conglomerates (more generally known as chaebols). W Group and S Group filed for bankruptcy, followed by D Group. Although W Group successfully restored its ordinary management and operation early on, D Group is still at the centre of complicated social and economic criticisms due to its financial institution affiliations and issues of financial consumer protection. All of these groups are large corporate groups ranked among the top 20 in terms of capital. Korea had already experienced a series of bankruptcy filings by chaebols during the Asian financial crisis from the late 1990s until the early 2000s, when H Group, J Group and K Group went bankrupt one after the other. In some other chaebols, all decision-making was suspended due to the criminal prosecution of chief executive officers. At the moment, all of the chief executive officers of T Group, S Group, H Group and C Group have been criminally prosecuted or are involved in a criminal trial. H Group was investigated by the National Tax Service and the Prosecutor's Office.

The first sukuk issued by a non-Muslim country bolsters London’s plan Islamic finance hub plans

What is troubling the regulator - and how the market can help

All but two of the region’s governments intend to use it