Vanessa Marquette has joined Loyens & Loeff in Belgium since 2 March 2020 as new partner. She is appointed as third partner of the Banking & Finance practice group of the Brussels office, next to Marc Vermylen and Koen Panis, where she will further develop our Financial Regulatory footprint in Belgium. Vanessa is recognized for her expertise in Banking & Finance with a focus on international finance law, regulated financial services, banking litigation and sustainable finance. She assists regulated entities such as financial institutions, payment services...

Read more

2020 marks the beginning of a new era for the container shipping industry. January 1 brought with it the implementation of a regulation issued by the International Maritime Organization known as IMO 2020, which requires carriers to limit the sulfur content of the fuel they burn to 0.5%—a drastic reduction from the previous cap of 3.5%. The aim of the mandate, one of the most substantial and far-reaching regulatory changes in the marine shipping industry’s history, is to sharply reduce...

Read more

 Li Xu was appointed as Vice Secretary of the Overseas United Working Committee (OUWC) of the China Association for Promoting International Economic & Technical Cooperation, a subcommittee of the China Association for Science and Technology which is registered in the Ministry of Civil Affairs.   In her new role, Ms. Xu is organizing a global think-tank forum to address the post coronavirus rebuilding effort.  The OUWC is responding to the demands “facing the world frontier of science and technology, economic key...

Read more

EU-UK Future Relationship: Council adopts negotiating directives On Tuesday, the EU Council adopted a decision to authorise the commencement of negotiations on the future relationship with the UK. As has been repeatedly stated by the EU, the mandate stresses that the future partnership must be “underpinned by robust commitments to ensure a level playing field for open and fair competition”. This is especially important to the EU, given the geographical proximity and economic interdependence between the blocs. Keep reading Europe reacts...

Read more

Emergency decrees has been issued to tackle the spread of Coronavirus in “red zones” and other risk areas: “smart working”, allowing employees to work remotely, may be implemented even absent previous agreement between the parties (which is, generally, instead a prerequisite). In compliance with the general obligation to preserve employees’ health, employers must identify alternative measures to minimize risk of infection and preserve the earning capacity of employees not working “smartly”. Italian government approved over the week-end urgent measures to...

Read more

On February 13, 2020, the United States brought new criminal charges against Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Company, alleging that the company participated in a racketeering conspiracy and conspired to steal trade secrets from companies in the United States. The new charges are in addition to the government’s previous allegations that Huawei committed financial fraud and deliberately evaded U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. According to the allegations in the superseding indictment, Huawei used various methods to misappropriate intellectual...

Read more

The U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the TCJA), which was enacted at the end of 2017, dramatically changed the U.S. cross-border tax regime. Many of the TCJA's international tax reforms that have received considerable attention deal with multinational corporations. However, there are somewhat lesser known provisions in the TCJA that relate to foreign individuals. This Holland & Knight alert deals with one such provision: a change to the U.S. "S" corporation rules that presents interesting opportunities for foreign individuals...

Read more

The doctor / patient relationship is one predicated on trust. In any relationship, a certain degree of trust is eroded when one feels that the other isn’t 100% present during a conversation. The doctor / patient relationship suffers when the inputting of EMR (electronic medical records) seems to take precedence over communicating directly to the patient. Making eye contact, observing body language, and focused listening are crucial components to the history taking and even the physical exam. Picking up on...

Read more

Money, money, money: the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework showdown continues Every seven years, EU leaders descend on the European Council’s headquarters for a multi-layered, rhetorical fight-to-the-death ‘battle royal’ to agree the EU’s seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) budget. Following months of proposals and internal negotiations by the Commission, Council and Parliament, European Council President Charles Michel called for EU27 Heads of State and Government to descend on the Europa building to hammer out a final compromise in a special meeting...

Read more

In romantic comedies it’s not uncommon for the main character to realize their best friend - out of familiarity overlooked - is actually the one they’ve been looking for all along... The point is that it is often easy to overlook the value of what is sitting right in front of you. In a similar way, we have found that a lot of the information companies have stored in their internal systems - in the form of emails, memos, Pdfs,...

Read more