REUTERS | Nikola Solic
January 11, 2019

Key learnings from Carillion’s collapse

Towards the end of last year, Thomson Reuters hosted a NEDonBoard expert panel event on the key learnings from the collapse of Carillion. The panel was chaired by Olivier Garrigue, experienced Chairman and CEO, and included the Reuters journalist, Kate Holton, and Giles Boothman, a partner and restructuring lawyer at Ashurst.

Lucinda Case, Managing Director of Thomson Reuters Legal UK & Ireland, and a trustee of the Council of the Royal Albert Hall, opened the event. In her experience as a trustee, Lucinda noted the difficulty sometimes in navigating extensive board information packages and striking the right balance between being challenging and getting involved in the details while allowing the executives to get on with their job.

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REUTERS | Navesh Chitrakar
January 8, 2019

Playbooks facilitate change in a changing world

A useful analogy can be drawn between the negotiation and execution of a contract, where the output is an executed contract, and the manufacture of an object, such as a car, where the output is a finished product. In a contract negotiation, the other party stands in the place of the customer for the finished product. While many customers are willing to accept standardised, mass-produced goods, others require varying degrees of customisation, which is also the case with contracts. Looking at the evolution of manufacturing provides a useful insight into the way that the contract review process has developed, where playbooks fit in, what other changes we can expect, and how to respond.

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REUTERS | Clodagh Kilcoyne
January 7, 2019

What you may have missed over the festive break

The week before Christmas saw several developments in relation to the UK audit market, including publication of the final report of the Kingman review. Meanwhile the government announced extensive employment law reforms following the Taylor Review and published a White Paper on the UK’s future skills-based immigration system. The Court of Appeal also gave judgment in a key employment status case.

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REUTERS | Jason Lee
January 4, 2019

How to build an ethical supply chain: an interview with James Bartle, CEO and Founder of Outland Denim

I met James Bartle at the Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust Conference 2018. Sitting in the front row of the audience, we struck up a conversation about his company, Outland Denim, a premium Australian-based denim brand. After a brief chat about slavery practices in manufacturing, he politely excused himself and casually walked up on stage to speak on the next panel. The session was titled, ‘Slave-Free’: A Unique Selling Point? and it was truly inspiring.

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REUTERS | Grigory Dukor
January 3, 2019

Brexit: December 2018 round-up

Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to defer the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal in December and the vote will now take place during the week commencing 14 January 2019. In another key development, the ECJ gave hope to the anti-Brexit lobby by ruling on 10 December 2018 that the UK could unilaterally revoke its Article 50 notice without needing the European Council’s consent.

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REUTERS | Ajay Verma
January 2, 2019

Modern Slavery: are you at risk of being named and shamed?

The Government is concerned that many organisations are still failing to meet their basic legal obligations when it comes to tackling modern slavery in supply chains.

They stepped up the pressure towards the end of 2018, with the Home Office writing directly to chief executives of 17,000 organisations with a general warning that ‘continued non-compliance’ will not be tolerated’. The organisations were urged to publish their  modern slavery statement, if reporting for the first time or otherwise, by 31 March 2019.

Not doing so, for those obliged to make this statement, means running the risk of inclusion in a publicly available list of non-compliance; thus being ‘named and shamed’.

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REUTERS | Sergei Karpukhin
December 17, 2018

What’s on the agenda for in-house lawyers in January 2019?

In addition to Brexit planning, this month in-house lawyers should also be aware of new initiatives on corporate governance, tackling poor payment practices, and improving reporting on disability, mental health and wellbeing.

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REUTERS |
December 11, 2018

5 reasons you haven’t switched hotline provider…. and why maybe you should

When was the last time you thought about changing your whistleblowing hotline provider?

Perhaps you’ve thought about it because of the significant cost relative to the number of actual reports you receive. Perhaps you’re frustrated with the complexities and technical challenges of offering your global employees a genuinely easy and free to use telephone reporting service, in their local language.

Perhaps you’ve thought about it, but, like the majority of companies with an incumbent provider, it’s unlikely you’ve done anything about it.

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REUTERS | Nikola Solic
December 5, 2018

Remuneration provisions for senior managers: time for a review?

Much attention is focused on the remuneration for executive directors in large UK listed companies. It receives huge media, Government and investor interest even though it concerns less than 1,000 people directly – but one theme is of wider application as it is beginning to affect UK bonus arrangements generally.

This is “malus and clawback”. Although there are now many investor and corporate governance bodies which recommend malus and clawback, the Investment Association has issued the most recent guidance in the form of its updated Investment Association principles of remuneration.

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REUTERS | Mike Segar
December 3, 2018

Brexit: November 2018 round-up

November was a pivotal month for Brexit negotiations with the publication  of the full text of the draft UK-EU withdrawal agreement, and the political declaration on the framework for the future UK-EU relationship (the deal). The House of Commons will debate and vote on a motion to approve the deal over five days, with the debate starting on 4 December 2018, and the vote taking place on 11 December 2018.

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