Imagine if you ran a small engineering company and decided to open an account with a bank which you used for several years in ordinary commercial business, only to find that its operations were then terminated. Not only that, but your account was frozen as the bank in question was accused by the US government […]
The recent outbreak of serious disorder in Hong Kong has given way to an uneasy calm. Following an ostensibly bizarre decision by local police to withdraw and allow hundreds of protestors to occupy and then vandalise the Legislative Council (LegCo), the building has been sealed off as forensics teams gather evidence, including fingerprints on discarded […]
Albania and its troubled Prime Minister, Edi Rama, are used to being the subject of protests. Speaking recently at a conference in London alongside Zoran Zaev, Prime Minister of North Macedonia and Ana Brnabic, Prime Minister of Serbia, Rama joked: “When you watch Albania today and see the pictures, you think: Oh my God, it’s […]
Barristers choose their words carefully when representing their clients in court. And so it proved when Steven Kay QC put his clients’ case in the Commercial Court in April. In his opening statements on behalf of former Metropolitan Police officers, Nigel Brown and Alec Leighton, Kay said: “It doesn’t matter what their motivation was with […]
‘The rule of law, if preserved, will ensure that Hong Kong continues to attract international business and investment and to hold its own entrepreneurial citizens here. This is a community largely made up of refugees from China – you don’t have to explain to those citizens the difference between having and not having the rule […]
There might, hypothetically, be a clear winner of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. AI systems and 5G technology are surely the revolution’s two key enablers, and the first mover – the first to successfully implement these systems on a large and sophisticated scale – will certainly gain a competitive advantage over others. This is not, however, […]
Ask a group of international lawyers which country provides the best justice and most of them will respond with an answer which includes the phrase: well, that depends. Identifying a bad system of justice is easy. It’s rather like being a passenger in a defective car: you can see there are no seatbelts, the windscreen […]
We are in the unusual position where the President of the United States and the man most likely to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom are subject to significant legal proceedings at the same time. So what happens when the most powerful politicians in their respective countries are alleged to have fallen […]
The law is often criticised for being too slow in reflecting changes that occur in societal attitudes. But the debate over whether it is a catalyst for change, or simply reflects a shift that has already happened, is finely balanced: compelling empirical evidence can be hard to find. In some circumstances, however, the law clearly […]
Created by the so-called “Sapin II” Law of 9 December 2016 (the Law), the French Anti-Corruption Agency (Agence française anticorruption, the AFA) is at the heart of the new French anti-corruption framework Not only is it in charge of (i) monitoring compliance with the eight anti-corruption measures set out in Article 17 of the Law, […]
With Japanese businesses sitting on more than $900 billion dollars in cash, analysts expect a “spending spree” as Japanese companies target new acquisitions abroad. The European Union is becoming the likeliest target for a wave of new deals as Japanese companies take advantage of the investment environment created in part by a historic trade deal. […]
The Rule of Law. Like democracy, the phrase is much used by politicians when they are trying to assume the role of a statesman rather than just being a mouthpiece of their party: they hope that it somehow elevates them to a higher philosophical plane. But practising lawyers know its true meaning: they live by […]
