On February 25, 2016, the FASB issued a new standard, Leases (ASC 842). Certain provisions of the new standard are particularly noteworthy for portfolio companies owned by private equity investors. Calendar year-end public companies adopting the standard on January 1, 2019 will need to apply the guidance to the 2017 and 2018 comparative periods presented. Most notably, the new standard requires lessees to recognize virtually all leases (other than short-term leases) on their balance sheet. This means that lessees will...

Reaching the 2.5 billion people worldwide who do not have access to the vision care they need took a step closer to reality this month when the Essilor Group launched the Vision For Life program. Jayanth Bhuvaraghan, Essilor’s Chief Corporate Mission Officer and Chairman of the two boards that will administer the funds, explained how it will work. “Vision for Life is a global strategic giving program that will fund, monitor and measure the impact of projects showing the most potential...

When UK emerging companies venture outside the UK, they quickly need to address whether – and how - to extend equity-based compensation to non-UK employees.  However, few jurisdictions offer a regime as favourable as the UK’s Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) scheme for providing equity compensation to emerging company employees. The discussion below provides guidelines for making this work.  Although the focus is on extending equity-based compensation to US employees, the issues addressed have broader applicability. 1. Provide for non-EMI grants of...

When the Danish company Coloplast needed a venue and activity to complement their global sales training kickoff, they chose Dream Racing. We helped them custom build an integrated program for their 70 sales managers that would enhance their sales strategy and celebrate their successes of the previous year. Starting with a morning of presentations in the state-of-the-art Media Center they then headed down to the track for a pit stop competition. Dressed in team unfiorms and feeling very competitive, sparks...

Daniel Glazer, co-leader of Fried Frank’s Tech Group, explains what European startups need to take into consideration when looking to raise capital from US VCs. Fried Frank regularly meet with UK and other European startups who are interested in raising funding from US-based VC investors. As we’ve previously written, it’s difficult for non-US startups to raise early-stage funding from most US VC investors without existing traction from American customers and/or business partners, and with no US operations in proximity to the US VC...

The IRS recently released an internal memorandum concluding that typical 'bad boy guaranties' provided by a partner for partnership debt should be treated as a recourse liability of the guarantor for purposes of allocating the debt, and associated deductions, among the partners. That result could reduce the amount of depreciation deductions that would be allocable to the non-guarantor partners. The memorandum was severely criticized in the tax community, as its conclusion was inconsistent with the way in which most practitioners...

The European Union Article 29 Working Party (Article 29) issued an opinion on the proposed EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework agreement (Privacy Shield) earlier this week, stating that although the Privacy Shield was a “great step forward,” the Article 29 group identified several areas in which it found the Privacy Shield to be unacceptable, including that it permits the U.S. to carry out “massive and indiscriminate” bulk surveillance of European Union citizens. On the other hand, just a day later...

Manufacturing’s pivot East in recent decades has opened up new opportunities for DS-Concept across the globe, but more recently we have registered demand to open up an office in Los Angeles to allow domestic clients to expand overseas and for foreign businesses to operate with ease in the US. The manufacturing industry’s rapid growth in California has been one of the main drivers of the state’s growth, with $149.79bn in manufactured goods exported in 2014, more than 11% of the state’s...