The judgment of the Court of First Instance in Chiquita Brands and Others v ...
The judgment of the European Court of Justice in Denuit and Cordenier (C-125/04) of 27 January 2005 The case developed out of a dispute between tourists and a travel agency regarding the price of tourist package services. Under the arbitration clause of the initial agreement between the parties, the tourists brought their claims before a Belgian arbitration court ...
What's your Freedom of Information forecast? Reasonably sunny, distinctly rainy or altogether a bit hazy? Whatever your response, it is possible to brighten your outlook and weather those FOI storms. If you’re an in-house lawyer in a public body in Scotland you'll no doubt be more than familiar with the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Five months on from the Act's full implementation date of 1 January 2005, it's time to take stock of your public body's progress so far ...
As a director you have a duty to act honestly, in good faith and in the best interests of the company. This means you must take proper care of the company's assets and ensure that you don't profit from your position. To this end, when purchasing property from the company, the purchase price should reflect the current market value ...
In this edition: - New Corporate Manslaughter Rules - ’64 Act Stamped Out - Lock Up Your Ladders! - News Round Up - Planning: Out of Town - Out of Mind? - Use Classes Change
The Director of Corporate Enforcement is targeting company directors who abandon insolvent companies and leave them to be involuntarily struck off the Register as an alternative to a formal liquidation. The Director has indicated that he will take proceedings under Section 160 of the Companies Act, 1990 to secure disqualification orders against such directors in appropriate cases. He is getting support for this in the High Court ...
The Irish Law Reform Commission has published two consultation papers recommending legislative changes to clarify the role, duties, powers and responsibilities of trustees, including charitable trustees, so that general trust law keeps up with the ever changing economic and social climate ...
In case of a dispute arising between the parties, it may be advisable initially to solve it without the recourse to the courts, i.e. through sending a letter - claim or a warning, signing the court approved settlement agreement, obtaining an executive record of the notary public according to promissory notes or cheques, whether protested or not, or by seeking compromise through negotiations, etc. If the parties fail to solve a dispute amicably, the dispute may be referred to the courts ...
This article, published in International Corporate Governance Review (published by Euromoney Yearbooks), aims to provide an overview of what the Baltic States are offering to owners of capital in regard of effective control over invested capital, its use, disposal and return. Accession of three Baltic States to the EU and NATO in 2004 proves the reliable status of these countries for foreign partners and makes no doubt regarding the guaranteed protection of investments made in this region ...
Inheritance tax is often assumed to be a rich man's concern, but the recent housing boom means that this is no longer the case. The sharp rise in house prices has completely outpaced tax thresholds, meaning that there has been a huge increase in the number of families who could face large bills for Inheritance Tax (IHT) when the homeowner dies ...
In this edition - Corporate Manslaughter Bill Moves Closer to Reality - Are You Relying on Existing Rights of Drainage to Service Your Development? - Does Your Architect Know He is Working for Free? - SDLT on Development Agreements - Equity Share Mortgages - Tree Huggers - Use Classes Order
Under the current law, for an organisation to be liable for a fatality the 'identification' principle must apply. This first requires an individual to be personally guilty of the wrongdoing. This individual must then be identified as the "controlling mind" of the company. There are several problems with the current system. It is often impossible to identify the "controlling mind" behind the decision which results in the death ...
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco International and Parmalat: names associated with tales of corruption, mismanagement and financial irregularity. But these names are now also synonymous with something else: a raft of reforms to company regulation worldwide. Two such reforms being felt in the UK are the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004, and the FTSE Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) Corporate Governance Index Series ...
The EU Directives on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction of certain Hazardous Substances in Electronic and Electrical Equipment (ROHS) are due to take effect from 13 August 2005. The Department of the Environment recently produced draft regulations to implement these directives and make the necessary amendments to existing waste legislation ...
The article appeared in the 2005 edition of The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Environment Law; published and reproduced with kind permission of Global Legal Group Ltd, London ...
2004 has again been a very busy year on the M&A and Corporate Finance front, with the building materials, financial services, media and the property sectors dominating. The take private arena has been particularly active. Having been privatised in 2002, eircom was floated again earlier in the year with a market capitalisation of €1.1 billion ...
Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. As business processes become more complex and costly many Irish companies are concentrating on their core activities and handing over responsibility for running expensive systems and managing large numbers of employees to expert third parties, for an agreed price. Irish companies are also increasingly outsourcing for strategic reasons, looking to leverage the specialist expertise of service providers to open new product and market opportunities ...
In part two of his article on Near and Offshore Outsourcings Dominic Conlon of A&L Goodbody sets out a list of issues which should be considered by any company looking to outsource its service requirements to a provider based in a foreign jurisdiction ...
What is State Aid? The State aid rules seek to control the aid or assistance which is provided by EU Member States to businesses. Article 87 of the EC Treaty states that “any aid granted by a Member State or through State resources in any form whatsoever” is incompatible with the common market. The Commission and the European Court of Justice have a considerable discretion in determining what amounts to State aid and have given the term a wide definition ...
Limited Companies (LCs) and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) are corporate structures that exist as separate legal entities and afford members limited liability. LCs and LLPs can enter into contracts, hold property, sue and be sued, grant fixed and floating charges and are subject to similar disclosure, accounting and filing requirements. The main distinction between them is that while an LC is treated as a taxable entity an LLP’s members are taxed as individuals ...
After long years of fierce debate, the Kyoto Protocol finally came into force on 16 February 2005, imposing obligations on states parties to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. This article takes a look at the background to the Protocol, and the many new and varied opportunities for businesses in Scotland and across the globe. The Protocol itself was adopted at the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto on 11 December 1997 ...
The year 2004 saw increased M&A activity in the Ukrainian banking sector. Some of the notable acquisitions include equity transfers in Kredit Bank (to PKO Bank Polski S.A.), Transbank (to Bank TuranAlem of Kazakhstan),Bank Leader (to Renaissance Capital of Russia), and, of course, the benchmark deal of the year — acquisitionby Vilniaus Bankas, a Lithuanian subsidiary of the powerful SEB Group of Sweden, of the Joint Stock Bank Agio ...
Foreign arbitral awards and court judgments in Lithuania may be enforced only after having been recognised and authorised for enforcement by the Court of Appeals of Lithuania, an authority empowered by the State to recognise awards/judgments and authorise their enforcement ...
This will depend on how much money you are trying to raise and the number of people to whom you intend to offer the shares. The biggest change to the current AIM prospectus will occur if you are raising more than EUR 2.5 million (about £1.7 million) and you are offering shares to more than 100 people. If that is the case, the prospective directive (PD) will apply and the company will need to produce a PD prospectus ...
With more than 13 million working days a year lost to stress at an estimated cost of £3.8 billion to the economy, managing employees’ anxiety levels has never been more important Although the figure of half a million workers in the UK experiencing work-related stress at intolerable levels appears manageable, this is really only the tip of the iceberg with up to five million people feeling 'very' or 'extremely' stressed by work ...
