Happy Chinese New Year!
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VerrasLaw on Jersey Finance TV - Jersey Finance in Greater China
Hiren recently contributed to Jersey Finance TV's webcast dealing with Jersey's presence in Hong Kong and doing business with China - follow the link to see the webcast: Jersey Finance TV - Jersey Finance in Greater China
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The 2009 UK Legal 500 is out ..
The latest edition of the UK (and offshore British islands) clients' and lawyers' bible - the UK Legal 500 2009 - has just been released.
We are pleased to have been recognised in our two key practice areas - corporate and commercial and investment funds - as, respectively, a tier four and a tier three firm in Jersey.
Read what the Legal 500 has to say about us here.
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4th ACQ Global Awards 2009 - Award Winner
Given that we've only been running for a year now, we were pleased to be named “New Law Firm of the Year - Channel Islands” by ACQ Finance Magazine in its announcement of their Global Award winners for 2009.
The ACQ Global Awards honour the top M&A dealmakers and their transactions. The independent awards are awarded by ACQ's in-house panel and industry peers, and the magazine canvassed its readership to nominate and vote for those firms they felt had stood out in the various awards categories. Guided by the poll’s results, the editors selected those firms that they felt had the greatest impact on the industry in 2008 as the award winners.
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Happy Birthday to Us!
We're one year old today!
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HM Treasury releases Interim Foot Report
HM Treasury has published Michael Foot’s interim report on his independent review of British offshore finance centres (OFCs), which outlines the findings from initial discussions with those centres. It is interesting that the interim report makes reference to:
- the importance of defining and understanding the mutual dependencies between the UK and the OFCs.
- the fact that the regulatory regimes in the OFCs have previously received "broadly favourable" reviews from the IMF.
- the willingness of the OFCs to meet developing international standards, despite the undoubted strain on their regulatory resources that such implementation will bring.
- the commitments by the OFCs to the OECD's internationally agreed standards on the exchange of tax information (although some may have more work to do than others!).
The review was commissioned to consider the immediate and long-term challenges facing the UK's crown dependencies (that is, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) and overseas territories (which include the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands) as financial centres, and Mr Foot confirms in the interim report that he will be taking take full account of the actions initiated by the G20 earlier this month over the course of his review.
The Interim Report can be found here.
The review is expected to be finalised and published in the fourth quarter of 2009.
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AIMA, the FSA and Lehman Brothers
The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) has published a letter on its website from Bruce Robson, FSA Asset Management Sector Team Manager. The letter responds to matters arising from the Lehman Brothers administration, including:
- futures segregated accounts
- pooling of client money
- time frames for the return of client assets and money
- the FSA's powers relating to the return of segregated client money and
- the FSA's powers relating to the protection of client money from excessive charges.
Mr Robson explains that the FSA believes the UK's infrastructure has proven to be "resilient and to have functioned in line with the existing regulatory provisions during the Lehman Brothers default". A number of areas are identified for review, to see whether there might be better ways to deal with future defaults, but Mr Robson points out that the complexity, scale and geographical spread of Lehman Brothers means that it will take time to resolve all of the issues that have arisen as a result of the administration.
Mr Robson also explains that the FSA is working on a number of key initiatives:
- to open better communications between insolvency practitioners and infrastructure providers to in case similar events occur in the future
- a review of how default arrangements are working, particularly in relation to OTC transactions
- client money issues, recognising investors' concerns about the timeframe for the return of client assets and
- possible reforms to the UK insolvency regime for investment firms.
Mr Robson has left the door open for AIMA to have further discussions on the issues covered in the letter.
Some of the issues covered reflect similar issues raised with the FSA by the Investment Management Association in December 2008.
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A happy and prosperous Year of the Ox ..
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Greetings
Things have all been a little hectic since our last post, so forgive us for not updating this blog as frequently as we would have liked!
Mustn't complain though - it does mean that we've picked up a couple of clients, and that we've been reasonably busy, and this would seem to indicate that the model that we've adopted does currently seem to be working out.
There'll be more soon (especially now that I have managed to get back into the blog site following a complete memory blank on how to log on!!), so please bear with us.
In the meantime, greetings to our erstwhile colleagues from our previous shop, who seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time looking at our website (it is amazing what statistics you get from your webmaster, isn't it?). Anyhow, you are welcome to browse around - if there is anything we can help you with, why don't you just contact us directly!?
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And they're off..
We’ve now spent quite a lot of time thinking about how this might work, and so far, we’re really not sure, so we’ll just dip our toes into this whole blog (or should we be using that awful phrase “blawg” which seems to have become so popular on the other side of the Atlantic?) thing, and see how we do.
How do Ikick this off, then ... and just how much of our time are we going to spend each time we come to update this blogthinking that same question?Perhaps, as this is the first post, we should introduce ourselves – but then we do that on the “About us” [hyperlink] page of this website, so do head on over there and have a look.
Better, perhaps, to give an overview of what to expect (hopefully!) from this blog:what we are going to try to do is regularly to update readers on developments, specifically in Jersey law, relevant to our principal practice areas. We’ll also try to keep you abreast of other developments of interest, and if you’re really unlucky, you may find the odd completely off-topic post, which might range from our experiences running a legal practice entirely on Apple computers to possibly ill-considered rants about particular stupidities.
We look forward to updating this blog on a regular basis, and hopefully to getting some feedback and comments from our readers – especially if there’s a topic you really want us to look at.
Jonathan
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Jersey Law. Quality. Efficiency. Dedication.
VerrasLaw is a niche corporate and investment funds practice, established to provide specialist, timely and efficient legal services in those core practice areas. As a specialist practice, our corporate, commercial and investment fund law capabilities rival those of much larger firms, and we are known for our dedicated and client-focused service.
Our lawyers have advised, and continue to advise, on major cross-border and international transactions primarily in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets work and cross-border investment funds.
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