On Tuesday, the European Parliament decided by 403 votes in favour, 166 against and 58 abstentions to enter into negotiations with EU governments on a Commission proposal for a Pay Transparency Directive. MEPs demand EU companies with at least 50 employees (instead of 250 as originally proposed) be required to disclose information that makes it easier for those working for the same employer to compare salaries and expose any existing gender pay gap in their organisation. Currently, working women in...

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Now that political agreement has been reached on the final text, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will enter into force soon. The DMA’s ex ante rules and obligations will apply next to the ad hoc EU and national competition rules. Time for big digital companies to take stock of the potential implications of these additional rules on their day-to-day business operations. See our infographic for a concise overview of the DMA. Rebuttable gatekeeper presumption The DMA introduces a rebuttable presumption to designate digital...

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The federal and provincial governments are gradually relaxing the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program to address the current labour shortage. Here is an overview of the current and upcoming flexibilities, as well as a reminder of current updates regarding travel restrictions as of April 7, 2022: Increasing the number of occupations on the list of occupations eligible for Quebec's simplified TFW process One of the major flexibilities announced is the increase in the list of occupations eligible for Quebec's simplified Labour...

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A look at how signatures are used in connection with transactions and the management of portfolio companies In times of advancing globalisation and new technologies allowing large amounts of data to be exchanged in encrypted form in fractions of a second, traditional written form, i.e. only concluding contracts when the parties or their representatives are simultaneously present or by exchanging manually signed documents through the post, seems somewhat outdated. The call for digital solutions has become even louder in...

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Coined in Neal Stephenson's 1992 best-selling novel, Snow Crash, the term "metaverse" has recently reentered the general public's lexicon to denote a technology hailed by some as the successor to the mobile internet and the next step in humankind's technological evolution. Though there is no consensus on the definition's precise contours, the metaverse has generally been described as an embodied internet where, instead of passively viewing content in two-dimensional space, users are in the content and experiencing it with...

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Introduction: Biometric Laws in 2022 In the first quarter of 2022 alone, no fewer than seven states have introduced biometric laws — California, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, and New York — generally based on Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Currently, only Illinois, Texas, and Washington have enacted biometric laws, and only the Illinois law provides individuals with a private right of action. While California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) covers the protection of biometric data, the act only provides...

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Europe had its sights firmly fixed on accelerating away from the pandemic in 2021. Borrowers looked to deliver robust recovery plans to build lender confidence and debt market activity was buoyant, with deal volume in 2021 up 99% on 2020, driven by strong M&A activity. In 2022, the conflict in Ukraine is likely to impact European debt market activity, but the severity of this is not yet clear. ESG continued to become a dominant theme in 2021, with environmental, social...

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A Miami-based importer and distributor of frozen seafood received a USD 1.5 million credit facility from Tradewind Finance. With the facility, the company will support its domestic sales growth with large American customers. The seafood importer, which primarily sells octopus, had started diversifying its product offerings by adding frozen tuna and salmon, and it needed a financial partner that could support its increased business other than the self-financing methods it already had in place. The company planned on continuing to...

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This article was first published in the Financial Times here and was re-published with the permission of William Rhodes | By William Rhodes and John Lipsky | The writers are co-chairs of the Sovereign Debt Working Group of the Bretton Woods Committee | The economic impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be felt most in low-income countries Since late February, the world’s attention has been focused on Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. However, some of the most damaging economic and...

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On March 25, 2022, the U.S. and EU announced that they reached a political agreement in principle on a new "Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework" (the Framework). This would be the third framework for EU-U.S. personal data transfers, after the invalidation of the Privacy Shield in 2020 and of its predecessor, the Safe Harbor, in 2015. The new Framework is yet to be set out in legal documents, which will need to be negotiated and adopted. Timing for the adoption...

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