News and Events

Page 5 of 161 2 3 456 7 8 9 10...»Last »

REDUCTION IN RED TAPE AND COST CUTTING AT THE HSE COULD COST BUSINESS MORE

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

The Coalition Government have made much of their intention of cutting red tape for businesses. As part of this process Lord Young has been undertaking a review of Health and Safety legislation. Alongside this review, the Government has also cut the budget of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) substantially. This reduction is coupled with [...]

Employment News: Can an employee’s actions ever amount to self-dismissal or deemed resignation?

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Employers are often faced with employees who are absent without leave and do not communicate as required. There is a tendency for an employee to say there is a “self-dismissal” or “deemed resignation” in the circumstances. The recent case of Zulhayir v JJ Food Services Ltd UKEAT/0593/10 has confirmed that an employee’s own repudiatory conduct [...]

Bond or guarantee? It’s all in the words

Monday, September 5th, 2011

A recent Court of Appeal decision has again highlighted critical differences between guarantees and on demand performance bonds. The key question that had to be addressed in the case of Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance Co Ltd v Jan de Nul N.V. & another was where C provides an on demand performance bond to guarantee [...]

Agency Law – Your Questions Answered

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Hill Hofstetter partner Larry Coltman addresses some of the current legal issues facing agents and principals. Click here to download the article.

Extracting investments from funds: investors’ rights in the face of suspension

Friday, August 19th, 2011

With many funds currently struggling to address substantial losses in the face of the recent turmoil in global equity markets, the issue of investors’ rights to redeem their investments from funds is likely to come back under the spotlight. In particular, where an investor has already served a notice of redemption on a fund, what [...]

Employment News: Avoiding the wrath of HMRC: when is a self-employed worker actually an employee?

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

The IR35 rules were introduced to end the perceived evasion of Income Tax (‘IT’) and National Insurance Contributions (‘NICs’) by the artificial creation of self-employed individuals who perform services through an intermediary (often a company owned and run by the individual) but who are, in fact, employees. The risks associated in incorrectly determining status are [...]

Bribery Act 2010: Relevance for M&A Transactions

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The Bribery Act 2010 came into force on 1 July 2011 and fixes the UK business spotlight firmly on bribery and corruption. It creates four new offences of bribery: bribing another person: giving, offering or promising a bribe; being bribed: requesting, accepting or receiving a bribe; bribing a foreign official; and the strict liability “corporate [...]

Employment News: Redundancy – Case Law Update

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

Over the last 6 months, there have been a number of redundancy-related cases heard in the Employment Tribunal and Employment Appeal Tribunal. These cases provide useful guidance on a number of tricky issues.

Employment News: Taxation of Termination Payments

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Employers often believe that they have reached agreement with a departing employee over a severance package on the termination of that employee’s employment only for further exploration of the tax implications of that settlement to cause negotiations to falter.

Employers could save themselves management time and costs by addressing the tax implications of the settlement at an earlier point in their commercial discussions with employees. Termination payments must be taxed correctly. If mistakes are made, it is the employer that HM Revenue & Customs will be looking to in order to recover unpaid tax and NICs, penalties and interest.

Avoiding Risks in the Cloud – Part 2

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

In Part One of this series we looked at what cloud computing is, as well as some initial practical considerations to bear in mind when sourcing software and services from the cloud.

In Part Two we go on to look at some of the important contractual issues surrounding data processing and security and how to deal with them.