Bad wars expose the weaknesses in the international framework of law. The attack by Russia on Ukraine is no exception to this proposition in an area of law often considered to be obscure but of very significant consequences. This is Article VIII 2b of the IMF agreement which allows a member’s exchange controls unilaterally to override its contracts in certain cases. This Article is considered a blot on the otherwise pure parchment of the IMF Agreement and should be removed.
25 March 2024In this article, David McIlroy and Ruhi Sethi-Smith of Forum Chambers examine the basis of the Court of Appeal decision in Philipp v Barclays Bank Plc [2022] EWCA Civ 318 and highlight the salient points of the appeal judgment before providing their conclusions on what this means for the victims of sophisticated Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud scams in the future.
25 March 2024On 6 April 2022, the European Commission adopted the final Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and its Annexes. The RTS was previously supposed to apply from July 2022 but will now instead apply from 1 January 2023.
25 March 2024The question of whether a derivative transaction is properly characterised as a hedge or as speculation has long vexed the English courts. It has arisen recently in a decision of the Commercial Court dealing with the capacity of an Italian local authority to transact interest-rate swaps. This article reviews the caselaw on the question and asks: (i) is it possible for the courts to make any distinction between hedging transactions and speculative transactions?; and (ii) what test should be applied?
25 March 2024In this article, the author compares two concepts that seek to explain why an assignee of a chose in action may be burdened by an arbitration agreement to which it is not privy. He posits that, of the “conditional benefits” concept and the “subject to equities” principle, the latter provides the better explanation.
25 March 2024In this article, Paul Mousel considers the methods for protecting investors’ rights in securities under Luxembourg law.
25 March 2024In this article the authors consider the impact of the UK Supreme Court decision in Lloyd v Google LLC on banks and other financial institutions which typically control vast quantities of (typically) relatively sensitive financial data.
25 March 2024In this article, Antony Hainsworth considers the interrelation between the UK’s proposed Green Taxonomy with the EU Taxonomy Regulation and other national green taxonomies.
25 March 2024European leveraged lending practitioners will need no telling that documentary terms have been something of a one-way moveable feast in favour of borrowers and sponsors for a number of years. In particular, the extent of a lender’s right to transfer its participation in a loan facility to another institution has been gradually eroded, with the “new normal” including significant fetters on transfer rights. Meanwhile, capital reforms continue to increase the cost to bank lenders of holding loans on their balance sheets and have resulted in banks seeking to optimise their balance sheets through sales in the secondary loan market and through the use of synthetic risk transfers. Is it therefore, time for bank lenders to re-assess the acceptability of transfer restrictions and to push for fewer restrictions?1
25 March 2024In this article Hin Liu explores the meaning of a “linked” or “exogenous” cryptoasset and analyses whether holding a token (in this case non-fungible tokens (NFTs), security tokens and physical goods tokens) that is purportedly linked to an underlying asset or right carries substantive legal effect(s). Where the token is linked to legal rights outside the blockchain, he analyses whether the token itself constitutes property.
25 March 2024