By Scott Ferguson, CEO | World Trade Centers Association  The way organizations approach global commerce is undergoing a radical change. Geopolitical instability is slowing growth in a volatile global economy as organizations are forced to adapt their tactics, making complex decisions that increase operational costs and, if mishandled, make them less competitive in an unforgiving business landscape. So, what can organizations do to navigate this ‘new normal’? As an association whose members deal with small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the...

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Tradewind has provided a $15 million credit facility to a 75-year-old manufacturer headquartered in Europe with a subsidiary in the USA. The company sells globally and is using the facility to support 120-day open account payment terms. The deal took shape after the client was pressed to extend longer payment terms to a major buyer of theirs. The buyer previously had a vendor finance program in place that arranged for early funding to the client and other suppliers. When the...

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The Polish tax authorities have announced that, with effect from 1 November 2019, Poland is introducing what is known as a Split Payments Mechanism (SPM). Non-resident businesses that are registered for Value Added Tax (VAT) will need to have a bank account in Poland, and will require an additional VAT bank account that is dedicated to receiving and making VAT payments. Under an SPM arrangement, the seller of certain goods must include some additional wording in its sales invoices, indicating...

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The global economy is evolving quickly, and tech and other startups are looking beyond traditional expansion targets like the UK and China. Popular targets now include relatively low cost, talent-rich countries like Israel, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland, which recently joined the ranks of FTSE Russell advanced economies, the first country to do so in nearly ten years. Throughout this evolution, many of the basic concepts of international expansion continue to hold true. As enforcement by tax and immigration...

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By Yumiko Olsen, Dennis Schmidt, Christian Schröder and David Curtis | Orrick  On June 28, 2019, the German parliament (Bundestag) passed new legislation imposing several changes to the current German Federal Data Protection Act (“BDSG”).  Although many of the changes addressed privacy aspects of criminal proceedings, the new legislation makes an important change for small companies by increasing the threshold to designate a Data Protection Officer (“DPO”). Whereas currently companies have to designate a DPO if they constantly employ at least...

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By Brent Carlson |  AlixPartners As part of the chronic trade tensions between the US and China, last year the US Congress passed the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA), which expanded export controls to include "emerging" and "foundational" technologies. These technologies – such as AI, machine learning, and data analytics tools – were declared as essential to the national security of the US and therefore subject to the new export controls regime. In this piece published by the Association of Corporate...

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The Italian whistleblowing reporting system (“Whistleblowing”) is regulated by Law no. 179 of 2017 (“Law”). In particular, the Law introduced new forms of protection for employees (in private and public companies) who report illicit acts occurred inside their company. According to this Law, employees may inform companies when he or she becomes aware of a violation of the Law no. 231/2001 system and/or the company ethic code and his or her identity will be protected. The law also introduced...

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