June 04, 2020 | Courts in the Netherlands have been asked to consider whether the COVID-19 pandemic justifies walking away from a deal. So far, the courts have upheld the terms of the transaction. In other words, it's business as usual. This newsflash discusses two recent decisions. Private equity firm ordered to sign share purchase agreement In one of the first COVID-19-related cases, the Amsterdam District Court ordered a private equity firm (the buyer) to proceed with the signing of a share...

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June 04, 2020 | Currency Current Rate Overnight Change EUR 1.12 - 0.55% GBP 1.25 + 0.08% CHF 0.95 - 0.42% CAD 1.35 - 0.19% JPY 108 + 0.17% MXN 22.5 + 0.34% Overview  The U.S. dollar spent most of the evening enjoying relative calm after falling for five consecutive days.  However, the greenback is back under selling pressure in early trading as European Central Bank actions improved market sentiment and reduced demand for safe-havens.  It is Thursday which means it is jobless claims day.  Initial claims fell to 1.88M last week from over 2M a week prior.  While the trend shows that...

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June 03, 2020 | On May 28, 2020, President Trump signed an "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship" directed to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. §230(c)). Section 230 has long afforded protections to interactive computer services against litigation over their hosting and moderation of online content. In hundreds of cases since the law was passed in 1996, courts have held that Section 230 immunizes online services from claims based upon their hosting of third-party content, and...

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This Tax Alert will address two Dutch international tax policy proposals as included in letters that the Dutch State Secretary of Finance recently sent to the Dutch parliament on 29 May 2020. We note that the proposals are still subject to parliamentary discussion and that at this moment in time, no legal text is available. 1. Proposal to introduce dividend withholding tax in relation to low tax jurisdictions as per 2024 The first letter dated 29 May 2020 contains an announcement...

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May 27, 2020 | The conundrum is harnessing the power of technology while not becoming a slave to it,” David Heron, Chief Medical Officer at British Petroleum says. “We should be helping people to take a break from their workstation rather than facilitating them spending more time on the laptop.” The experience of working from home has brought a combination of remarkable achievements and fundamental questions. Zoom and WebEx as well as the timely arrival of Microsoft Teams provided a very efficient way...

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