By Ernst & Young With the UK economy looking set to remain stuck in low gear for the rest of this year, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) should keep interest rates on hold until late 2018 to avoid weakening the economic outlook. Download our latest EY ITEM Club forecast. However with expectations high that interest rates may rise from 0.25% to 0.50% this November, the EY ITEM Club is urging the MPC to wait until the UK’s economic prospects...

By Sophie Pelicier-Loevenbruck  | Litter Mendelson Following the introduction of new corporate social responsibility obligations for collaborative platforms towards independent workers, the French Department of Labor published guidance to clarify the scope of this responsibility. The requirements established by French law1 can be divided into two groups of rights for the independent workers: collective rights (right to strike, freedom of association) and individual rights (covering the workers' contributions for the occupational accident insurance and for vocational training). To Whom Do These Social...

By STOUT Stout is proud to announce that John D. Baumgartner, Emma Bienias, Len Devaney, and Joe Torzewski have been promoted to Managing Directors. Each of these professionals has shown a commitment to Stout’s core values, provide superb client service, make significant economic contributions, demonstrate strong leadership and management skills, and have solid reputations in the marketplace. John D. Baumgartner is in the Houston Dispute Consulting group. He has more than 15 years of restructuring, consulting, and corporate finance experience and...

By Robert Rosenblum, with contributions from Susan Gault-Brown, Greg Broome, Todd Carpenter, Amy Caiazza, John Sullivan, and Tyler Kirk. WSGR Initial coin offerings (ICOs), token pre-sales, and similar sales of blockchain-based coins and tokens are quickly becoming an important fundraising option, and an important method of attempting to seed a token-based platform with sufficient "currency" (that is, tokens) to permit the platform to function as intended. With the end of 2017 in sight, it is useful to catalog what we...

By Eric Fort | Bruno Gasparotto | Alain Goebel  |Thierry Lesage | Jan Neugebauer | Arendt & Medernach LLC On 11 October 2017, and the last time before next year’s parliamentary elections, the current Luxembourg Finance Minister presented the budget law for 2018 to the Parliament (Chambre des Députés).The main tax-related provisions of the Bill of Law N° 7200 (“Bill”) as laid out below in more detail include inter alia: Changes to the capital gains tax treatment of business restructurings; Improvements...

By Jeffrey Mordaunt | Joshua Swedlow | Stout  Stout's Trends in Trade Secret Litigation Report details the latest findings from our continual monitoring of the federal trade secret litigation landscape. The report also features the conclusions derived from our quantitative study on federal trade secret cases in which a verdict was derived or settlement information was publically available, over a 26-year period from 1990 to 2015. Our in-depth research and analysis focuses on: The impact of the Defend Trade Secrets Act...