The Allen & Overy Podcast

Selecting your Fund Domicile: Ireland

The next episode of Selecting your Fund Domicile covers topical fund trends in Ireland. A&O Middle East Funds & Asset Management Partner Kamar Jaffer moderates a discussion about key legal, regulatory and sustainability trends in the funds space led by A&L Goodbody Partners, Brian McDermott and Stephen Carson. 

The fork in the road – divergence of the EU and UK prospectus regimes

In this episode of Allen & Overy’s Market Horizons podcast series, partners Amanda Thomas (London), Jonathan Heeringa (Amsterdam), Paul Péporté (Luxembourg) and counsel Jennifer Cresswell (London) from A&O’s International Capital Markets practice discuss the divergence ahead in the prospectus space from a debt security perspective.

Together they cover what is coming down the track on both the EU and UK sides as the review of both prospectus regimes progresses and the UK moves forward with its future regulatory reform programme.  

Episode 5: Deconstructing Crypto - The U.S. regulatory vice tightens

In episode 5 of Deconstructing Crypto, Todd Fishman and Gene Ingoglia discuss the recent wave of regulatory actions by U.S. authorities on the crypto industry, and the increasing pressure on financial institutions and firms that provide access and services to crypto clients and markets. 

They highlight some of the key events that have occurred since December, such as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the withdrawal of Signature and Metropolitan from the crypto space, the denial of Custodia’s Fed membership, the National Economic Council’s policy statement on crypto clients, the DOJ’s probe into Silvergate, and the SEC’s charges against Terraform and potential action against Paxos. 

They also explain the Securities and Exchange Commission's targeting of another digital asset market program, staking, and ongoing enforcement action in this space. 

Todd and Gene analyze the implications of these developments for the crypto industry and the legal and strategic challenges that crypto actors face in navigating a complex and evolving enforcement landscape. 

Surviving the “valley of death” - How early-stage life sciences companies can overcome funding gaps and IP hurdles

Tine Carmeliet, Juno Hautekiet and Geert Glas discuss how early-stage life sciences companies can survive the so-called “valley of death”. This is the funding gap between making a promising scientific discovery in a laboratory setting and the translation of the scientific findings into human applications and potential treatments for a disease, and is a widely recognized problem. 

Our life sciences experts focus on the challenges growth companies face and why it is important to make the right legal decisions early on. They discuss, among other things:

the importance of properly organising seed funding during pre-clinical trial stages;

the maintenance of intellectual property rights and the potential impact of university-funded research; and 

the unpredictable and expensive nature of clinical trials, and how to manage these challenges to successfully navigate the “valley of death”.

Blockchain bonds: how legal frameworks are changing – U.S. and APAC (Part 1)

In this latest episode of Allen & Overy’s Market Horizons podcast series, join us in the first part of a whirlwind tour of several jurisdictions where we focus on international legal and regulatory developments to facilitate digital bond issuances.

We are joined by partners in A&O’s Debt Capital Markets team Justin Cooke (New York), Agnes Tsang (Hong Kong), and senior associate Philippe Noeltner (Luxembourg).

The second part of this podcast will look at how legal frameworks are changing in the UK and Europe. We will be joined by partners in A&O’s Debt Capital Markets team, Daniel Fletcher (London), Hervé Ekué (Paris), Salvador Ruiz (Madrid), Jonathan Heeringa (Amsterdam), counsels Daphne van der Houwen (Amsterdam), Daniela Schmitt (Frankfurt) and Emiliano La Sala (Rome), and senior associate Philippe Noeltner (Luxembourg).

Selecting your Fund Domicile: Luxembourg

In this podcast, A&O Partner Kamar Jaffer (Dubai) and Counsel Miao Wang (Luxembourg) discuss the key legal and regulatory trends in Luxembourg, a popular onshore jurisdiction for fund establishment.   

This podcast forms part of Allen & Overy’s Selecting your Fund Domicile series. Selecting your Funds Domicile is a series of video podcasts that focuses on manager considerations for setting up a fund and choosing the most appropriate domicile. Featuring leading offshore law firms and A&O experts, these Q&A video podcasts explore some of the benefits and legal and regulatory considerations for offshore and onshore locations, including the British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Dublin, Cyprus, the Isle of Man, Mauritius and Luxembourg.

Episode 2 – ASEAN data protection and privacy developments: A deep dive into Singapore

Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) had its first comprehensive review since 2012. The review has changed the Personal Data Protection Commission’s (PDPC) enforcement powers, they can now impose fines of 10% of a company’s turnover under certain circumstances - what does this mean for your businesses? 

The PDPC also recently released guidelines on ‘Personal Data Protection Considerations for Blockchain Design’. As businesses across the world are starting to deploy distributed ledger technologies some of these blockchain networks have started storing personal data. From a practical perspective, how does the PDPA affect businesses that are using blockchain technologies to process personal data? 

Tune in to Cedric Lindenmann, Yu Jia Ang and Jessica Dye’s discussion on data protection developments in Singapore. 

Sanctions outlook 2023

Sanctions began dominating the headlines again in 2022. Largely, reports focused on the ongoing sanctions targeting Russia. As we look ahead to 2023, Russia remains a target. Other countries (such as Belarus, China and Iran) are also under scrutiny. There is also increasing focus on sanctions enforcement. In this podcast, our experts consider these trends and what may be on the horizon for sanctions in 2023.

Topics include:

• sanctions targeting Russia;
• other the key sanctions targets (Belarus, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea);
• sanctions enforcement trends;
• coordination between the UK, USA and EU;
• human rights and corruption-related sanctions; and
• challenges to sanctions legislation and in sanctions-related cases.

Speakers:

Matthew Townsend, Ken Rivlin, Maura Rezendes, Udo Olgemoeller, Jonathan Benson, Tom d’Ardenne, Thomas Declerck

 

Environmental and sustainability outlook 2023

Join our global environmental and sustainability experts as we discuss the trends and outlook across some of our major jurisdictions for 2023. We look at developments across the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Africa and the implications of the regulatory landscape on businesses.

This episode was recorded in January 2023. The podcast does not go into detail on the expected regulatory changes directly focused on the financial services sector.  These will be the subject of a separate podcast.  

Deconstructing Crypto: Episode 4 - The Post-FTX Episode

Following the indictments of senior FTX executives, two guilty pleas and related enforcement actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the digital asset space faced huge difficulties towards the end of 2022.

In addition, on January 3, 2023, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) and the OCC (Office of Comptroller of the Currency) issued a joint statement highlighting “key risks associated with crypto-assets and crypto-asset sector participants.”   Those risks included:

• risk of fraud and scams among crypto-asset sector participants
• legal uncertainties related to custody practices, redemptions, and ownership rights
• inaccurate or misleading representations and disclosures by crypto-asset companies,
• significant volatility in crypto-asset markets
• susceptibility of stablecoins to run risk
• contagion risk within the crypto-asset sector resulting from interconnections among certain crypto-asset participants
• risk management and governance practices in the crypto-asset sector exhibiting a lack of maturity and robustness
• heightened risks associated with open, public and decentralized networks

U.S. Litigation experts Todd Fishman and Eugene Ingoglia talk through these developments and what they might reveal about potential trends as we enter 2023.