DS-Concept has recently on-boarded a major global provider of technology products that sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment and high-tech services. The company is headquartered in New Jersey and averages $40 million in sales annually. The company approached DS-Concept to fund their European sales originating from their subsidiary in the Netherlands. While established in the U.S. for over ten years, the European subsidiary has been in operation for under two years and, because of their relatively short sales history, they had...

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Big Data and value based thresholds in the EU Authorities in Europe are debating the role of Big Data in merger control. The debate has been triggered by a concern about the market power that companies can obtain from their ownership of data - perhaps helped by strong feelings about privacy issues - and the frustration that certain high value deals involving Big Data companies nearly escaped European merger control.  Read Houthoff Buruma's briefing on this topic here. Houthoff Buruma's vision on...

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Directors "can avoid entire fairness review of a self-dealing transaction by demonstrating that the transaction has been ratified by a fully informed and uncoerced vote of a majority of disinterested stockholders, in which case business judgment will apply and plaintiff must meet the standard for pleading a waste claim." Reprinted with permission from the May 3, 2017 edition of the Delaware Business Court Insider. © 2017 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. (ALMReprints.com,...

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Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is pleased to present the latest edition of The Entrepreneurs Report. In this issue, we've compiled a range of data on venture financing transactions in which the firm was involved in Q1 2017, with the objective of identifying relevant trends in activity and valuation levels for the U.S. venture capital industry in general. We also provide data on bridge loans. In addition, we feature an interview with Justin Klein of New Enterprise Associates (NEA)...

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by Bruno Gasparotto   The question of the scope of the cost-sharing VAT exemption, also referred to in the Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 as amended ("EU VAT Directive") as “Independent Groups of Persons” or “IGPs”, is currently being debated at the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJEU”) in several cases.    Last Thursday marked the first milestone regarding this specific VAT exemption since the CJEU released its judgment in the case Commission v Luxembourg (C-274/15).   In this judgment, the CJEU essentially...

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BY ILYSE SCHUMAN AND MICHAEL J. LOTITO ON On April 29, 2017, the first 100 days of the Trump administration came to an end.  A government shutdown was averted after the White House and Congress reached a spending deal, and the U.S. Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia over a year ago was finally filled upon the Senate confirmation of Neil Gorsuch.  However, for those expecting dramatic changes in workplace policy, much of the...

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NewYork-Presbyterian has established the William Rhodes and Louise Tilzer-Rhodes Center for Glioblastoma. Launched with an initial $5 million gift from William Rhodes, the new state-of-the-art program conducts groundbreaking research and provides cutting-edge treatments for glioblastoma and other deadly brain cancers. The Center is led by physicians from Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, who, along with NewYork-Presbyterian, are national leaders in neuro-oncology.  Mr. Rhodes, who has been a Life Trustee of NewYork-Presbyterian since 1992, is also issuing a challenge...

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Key Highlights: • Top subsector stock performers in Q1 of 2017 included For-Profit Educational and Vocational Institutions and Digital Educational Content & Services, up 12.9% and 9.4%, respectively • On average, the stock price indices for the subsectors outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 5.5% during Q1 2017, again led by strong performance in the ForProfit Education and Vocational Institutions subsector • On average, EBITDA multiples for the subsectors were down by 0.1x over the prior quarter and up 1.7x on a...

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Government-commissioned report on the effects of private equity in the Netherlands generally positive     The Netherlands is consistently ranked as one of the five most active private equity markets in Europe. However, private equity's role in the Dutch economy has not gone unscrutinised; in 2015 two Labour Party MPs presented an "initiative note" to the Dutch parliament in which the private equity sector was portrayed as riddled with undesirable behaviour. Measures proposed by them include limits on interest deductibility, recapitalizations and...

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