“Commercial Awareness Is Global.”
By: Ainsley Brown The Australian telecommunications group Telstra is to be broken up in a move to spur competiotion. The telecommunications giant, according to Australia’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, would be forced to separate its retail and wholesale arms if it does not do so voluntarily. The government – a 12% part owner – for its part hopes Telstra will
By: Ainsley Brown PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the administrator of the now defunct bank’s European arm is set to file a claim against the parent bank in US bankruptcy court. PwC has until September 22 – the deadline set by the court – to file its claim. The claim surrounds some $100 billion in pledges made by the parent bank before it
By: Ainsley Brown Is the aid given to Airbus by the governments of Germany, the UK and France in violation of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) subsidies agreement? The answer to this question is expected to be known by the parties today when the WTO is expected to hand down its confidential ruling to the parties. Confidential rulings are part
By: Ainsley Brown The Indian newsprint industry is thriving despite the general global trend for decline in this industry and the global recession. It could even be said that part of the industries success could even be attributed to the global recession itself. So what’s behind the success? There are four interrelated reasons for the industry’s tremendous success in India. The
By: Ainsley Brown The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has launched suit in the English High Court against Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) claiming that GSK has violated its intellectual property. This new action is far from being the opening salvos of this drug war; the two have already locked horns over the same matter. GSK last year sued Novartis in both
By: Ainsley Brown The English High Court has scuttled a plan for quick payouts to creditors by the administrator’s of Lehman Brothers’ European arm. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the administrator is now carefully studying the judgment and weighing it options i.e. should it appeal or not. In either case Lehman Brothers’ creditors face delays in recovering their assets. The ruling affects some
By: Ainsley Brown The first prosecution under the UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 has been adjourned until October. The Act seeks to make convictions of companies with respect to deaths at the workplace much easier. Under English law a corporation as a juridical person is capable of both committing and being convicted of crimes. However, as an
By: Rechtsanwalt (Attorney) Carsten Lexa, LL.M. I´m not sure whether the following are really “secrets”. Very likely they are not. But they are definitely not commonly known – even to US-Americans, who use, on average, about 8 credit cards per person. Especially the Germans always wonder about the problems the US-Americans have with credit cards and how it is possible
By: Ainsley Brown It has been reported in the Times that ¨up to 5, 000 British investors have an estimated £3 billion stashed away in secret accounts in Liechtenstein. It is a good thing then, well good from the perspective of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), that Liechtenstein and the UK Government have reached an agreement on the sharing of
By: Ainsley Brown There are no more countries left on the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Tax haven black list. Does this mean that the black list is no more? No, not exactly. The OECD has removed Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco from its black list of non-compliant tax havens. The three countries were the last remaining on the