Best practices for preventing legal risks and the role of AI

What are the major pain points that you have experienced as GC when dealing with legal disputes?
Dealing with claims against an organisation is a huge drain on resources for any team. Linking to the 80:20 principle, you don’t want to be devoting 80% of your resources to firefighting something that may be worth less than 20% of the legal team’s value to the organisation. Most legal teams want to be working proactively, helping the organisations they work within to grow by doing good business, not always picking up the pieces and firefighting after something has gone wrong. Reactive defence is incredibly time consuming and can involve significant numbers of people. Even if you have a team big enough to manage disputes in-house, few in-house counsel have much or any hands-on experience of litigation (and fewer have experience of ADR) beyond a seat in their training contract. Many in-house counsel also find disputes demoralising and a lose-lose situation for the legal team, if not also for the organisation. Therefore typically, dispute resolution is outsourced to external counsel once it escalates, because of the manpower and expertise available. Obviously, this comes at a cost which can be a sizeable chunk of the legal budget. Trying to make provision for disputes in the team’s budget typically involves quite a bit of crystal ball gazing. And the in-house team still has to be involved anyway. It’s no wonder that many tools have been developed to assist teams with case management, case strategy and paperless disputes. Continue reading “Best practices for preventing legal risks and the role of AI”

Protecting the interests of financial services’ users

Protecting the users of financial services should always be a priority for any government. In order to comply with this obligation, the Mexican state created a government entity to protect the interests of users of financial services, including services rendered and products sold by insurance companies. That entity is the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Users of Financial Services or, by its acronym in Spanish, the ‘Condusef’. Condusef also works as a mediator for controversies that arise between financial services companies and their customers. Continue reading “Protecting the interests of financial services’ users”

Trending commercial disputes and insurance issues in Hong Kong

As one of the world’s leading financial centres, Hong Kong is home to many financial institutions and international companies. With a common law legal system, Hong Kong’s commercial law and financial regulatory system shares a historical connection to the United Kingdom. However, there are important differences and, in some respects, particularly when it comes to the law of insurance contracts, Hong Kong has maintained a more conservative approach. Continue reading “Trending commercial disputes and insurance issues in Hong Kong”

A state of flux

For personal injury (PI) practitioners, dynamism is one of the features which makes this such a fulfilling field to work in. The work follows a constant ebb and flow of patterns and trends – from the boom and wane of asbestos-related cases, to the rapid spike in noise-induced hearing loss claims, to the recent resurgence of interest in vicarious liability. The world of PI often acts as a microcosm of broader market and societal changes, mapping developments and drawing out issues. It’s no surprise, then, that the pervasive and rapid changes inflicted on our daily lives over the last few years have been mirrored, magnified and mulled over in the personal injury arena, and the fallout is of primary concern to in-house legal teams, particularly in the insurance sector. Continue reading “A state of flux”

The rise of ESG – beware the say-do gap

Companies increasingly face scrutiny of their environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities, including from investors, regulators, prosecutors, consumers, NGOs and other stakeholders. While robust ESG programmes can provide new business opportunities and other competitive advantages for companies, ESG issues also can pose legal and reputational risks, particularly when there is a gap between what companies say and do with respect to ESG. Continue reading “The rise of ESG – beware the say-do gap”

Corporate governance in Japan: recent developments

Introduction

Corporate governance reforms for Japanese listed companies have been accelerating in recent years. However, a tide of shareholder activism is hitting corporate Japan even harder in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, demanding more effective governance, sustainable growth, attention to environmental and social issues, as well as decent shareholder returns. The reforms are ongoing – Japanese listed companies are still in the process of transforming their governance systems into something that has never existed before in the Japanese market. In this article, we will discuss two of the most recent governance-related topics in Japan – the restructuring of the market segments of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) which will take effect in April 2022, and the revised Corporate Governance Code which took effect in June 2021. Continue reading “Corporate governance in Japan: recent developments”

Corporate governance meetings in the face of social distancing

More than two years have gone by since the world confronted a new reality and a new way of living due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing policies necessitated adjustments to routines, family and work life, and economic stability as the impossibility of continuing with daily activities as usual came to the fore. All these changes have left society and public and private institutions in a state of uncertainty and with a constant search for alternatives to reactivate social and economic activities to conduct them in the most efficient and safe manner, and in compliance with the law and the continued changes in government policies regarding Covid-19 preventive measures.

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New ESG rules in Switzerland: how to mitigate the risk of criminal liability

New ESG disclosure and due diligence rules

On 1 January 2022, the indirect counterproposal to the so-called Responsible Business Initiative has been introduced in the Swiss Code of Obligations (CO). The new rules in articles 964a ff. CO require that companies of public interest domiciled in Switzerland, such as listed companies and large companies supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), publish annual reports on ESG issues. Companies must account for environmental, social and employee issues, respect for human rights and the fight against corruption in their report. The new reporting requirement under Swiss law corresponds to the EU Directive 2014/95/EU on reporting on non-financial aspects. The report on ESG matters must be approved by the board of directors and the shareholders’ meeting. Further, the report must be published electronically and remain available for at least ten years. Continue reading “New ESG rules in Switzerland: how to mitigate the risk of criminal liability”