On September 7, 2016, the New York State Department of Labor (“NYDOL”) adopted a final regulation setting the conditions by which employers in New York State can pay wages by direct deposit or by debit card. This regulation is effective March 7, 2017, and adopts most of the provisions that the NYDOL initially proposed on June 5, 2016.  The regulation magnifies the scope of New York Labor Law section 192, which prohibits employers from directly depositing the net wages...

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Free shipping. Faster delivery. More options. Online shoppers are stepping up their demands, but satisfying them could drain retailers’ coffers. How retailers and their freight partners respond to the challenges—and opportunities—emerging in this changing landscape will spell the difference between success and failure in the future. E-commerce is exploding in the United States, enjoying a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2000 through 2015 and reaching $343 billion in revenue for 2015. In that same time frame, e-commerce has...

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Non-compete agreements have long been used by employers as an effective tool to protect their valuable trade secrets and confidential information. However, employers’ overuse of non-compete agreements and employers’ practice of requiring all of their employees to sign non-compete agreements recently has come under significant attack by federal and state governments. In July, Trade Secrets Watch discussed some of those recent attacks. Since July, there have been a number of additional efforts by government to prohibit the overuse of...

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Antitrust issues and capital constraints are among obstacles to large deals, the ratings agency notes. Fitch Ratings entered the fracas over mergers among Europe's banks on Wednesday when it said that deals among the continent's mid-market players would be more likely than consolidation among larger firms. "Mergers and acquisitions among mid-tier EU banks are more likely than large-scale deals such as between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, whose recent discussions were reported in the media," Fitch said. Fitch added, "The EU's competition authorities may...

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Appraisal rights actions continue to be measures by which shareholder activists seek to generate value from public mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions. During the past few years, those actions have become more commonplace. They’ve served not only as a way for shareholders to increase deal value but also as a way to generate additional returns through potential arbitrage-like opportunities. Earlier...

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