Recent Articles

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  20/05/2024

  United Kingdom

  ASA rules against Festival Free Bets ad featuring Astrid Wett

  On 15 May 2024, the Advertising Standards Authority (the “ASA”) issued a ruling against Festival Free Bets for a social media post featuring an image of Astrid Wett at Cheltenham racecourse, who is under 25 years old.The ASA has previously upheld rulings where an individual’s social media presence significantly influenced whether an ad appeals to children, as seen in the People’s Postcode Lottery ad featuring Emma Willis, which was held to have a strong appeal to under 18s (read more here).The AdvertisementOn 12 March 2024, a post on Astrid Wett’s X (formerly Twitter)...

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  20/05/2024

  England and Wales

  The FCA’s anti-gre­en­wash­ing rule and guidance: what are the litigation risks for firms?

  The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently published its finalised guidance on the anti-greenwashing rule, which will come into force on 31 May 2024. The anti-greenwashing rule, in the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Sourcebook, requires all FCA authorised firms to ensure that any reference to the sustainability characteristics of a product or service is:consistent with the sustainability characteristics of the product or service, andfair, clear and not misleading. The guidance is intended to help firms understand and comply with the rule, by setting out the FCA’s...

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  17/05/2024

  Europe

  European Sanctions: Mandatory Contract Clauses, New Criminal Penalties

  BackgroundFollowing Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022, global allies including the UK, US and EU, Canada and Australia, acted in concert to impose stringent sanctions and export control restrictions designed to stem the flow of investment into the Russian war machine. These included wide restrictions on the goods and their components found on the battlefield in Ukraine, and is reflected in the G7 agreed list of Common High Priority Items.The two years since have seen the growth of a shadow “evasion” economy, used by supporters of the Russian...

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  17/05/2024

  England

  High Street Rental Auctions: the Government’s response

  Summary The Government has published its response following its consultation on the design of its High Street Rental Auction policy. This policy is designed to help local authorities combat the detrimental effects of long-term vacancies on the high street. This Law-Now highlights some key aspects of the Government’s response. The Government will over the coming months work with stakeholders to design and develop secondary legislation to give effect to the proposals. The Government anticipates that this legislation will come into force in mid-2024. Prior to then, the Government will release...

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  17/05/2024

  United Kingdom

  Built on sand: problems of risk allocation and collaboration in port development contracts

  Introduction The British Ports Association estimated in 2022 that there were £1.7bn of port projects in the pipeline, and investment in port infrastructure topped £1bn in 2021. There is pressure to deliver port upgrades to serve floating offshore wind projects (for which the UK is responsible for a fifth of the global pipeline), in addition to meeting the sector’s decarbonisation and environmental commitments, delivering modern infrastructure to facilitate international trade and growing regional economies. With that backdrop in mind, we consider some of the key contractual...

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  16/05/2024

  United Kingdom

  A Roadmap to the Overseas Funds Regime

  HM Treasury and the FCA jointly published a Roadmap on 1 May 2024 for implementing the Overseas Funds Regime (the “OFR”).  This follows on from the FCA’s December 2023 Consultation Paper on Implementing the OFR (see our previous article on this here). Who does this impact?Operators of EEA UCITS funds (excluding money market funds (“MMFs”)) that either are within the Temporary Marketing Permissions Regime (“TMPR”), or who wish to market to UK retail investorsUK Distributors of non-UK UCITS funds (excluding MMFs) with a UK retail...

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