Insights

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, your briefing on the events that will define the month to come, hosted by Associate Director Isabelle Trick.

This week on the podcast, Conan D'Arcy is joined by Associate Director David Song to unpack the latest developments in the global push to regulate digital currencies. They compare proposals in Europe and the US, explore the political aftermath of the FTX collapse and look towards the future path to implementation.

This week on the podcast, Conan D'Arcy is joined by Associate Sonia Vasconcellos to review Sam Altman's recent testimony before the US Senate and what it means for the regulation of generative AI in the United States and beyond.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the key building block to internet governance and has shaped the growth of e-commerce, social media, search, and the other key services we use every day online. A change to the legal framework, potentially prompted by court decisions, could create major upheaval in how the internet and user-generated content is organized…

This week, Conan D'Arcy is joined by Lorna Woods, a Professor of Internet Law at the University of Essex whose work is widely regarded as lying the groundwork for the UK's Online Safety Bill. Conan and Lorna discuss her regulatory philosophy, respond to recent criticism of the Online Safety Bill, and look towards the regulation of generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

The future of Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition has seen changing fortunes from week to week, with the unexpected move of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in blocking the deal followed weeks later by the European Commission’s granting its approval, albeit with remedies attached. With two such major players within the gaming sector involved in…

A GC team has just returned from Hong Kong, where we held discussions with a series of private domestic and foreign investors about the outlook for China. Many pointed out how private investment, from both domestic and foreign sources, is declining just as China needs more of it. Geopolitics is partly to blame, but an uncertain domestic political environment is also…

This week on Top in Tech, Senior Associate Jack Keevill joins Conan D'Arcy to unpack a new European Union push to overhaul technology patents. Will the reforms contribute to building tension between the EU and US?

The Milken Conference is an annual gathering of more than 3,500 financiers, corporate executives, policymakers, journalists, entertainment figures and others from around the world, held last week in Los Angeles for the first time since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Global Counsel attended Milken to meet with clients who were in attendance, hear from the politicians…

While Germany is proceeding with its final phase-out of nuclear power, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), interest in building new nuclear plants continues to grow. Particularly in Poland, which currently does not have any reactors producing electricity, but also countries like Czechia, which proposes to increase the share of nuclear power in its energy mix from the…

Financial markets and the banking system breathed a sigh of relief on May 1st following news that First Republic, the troubled San Francisco-based lender that had hovered on the edge of failure for days, would be acquired by JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, with funding and loss-sharing support provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). The S&P…

This month, Isabelle Trick is joined by Ed King to preview the upcoming G7 summit, Thomas Gratowski looks towards pivotal elections in Turkey, and Alexander Smotrov explains tensions over grain exports among EU nations and Ukraine.

This week on the podcast, Conan D'Arcy is joined by Associate Bart Myners to unpack the CMA's decision to block Microsoft's blockbuster purchase of Activision-Blizzard. They also touch on the UK's new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, which empowers the CMA to introduce a range of pre-emptive measures on large tech platforms with a view…

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has fired the starting gun on what is likely to be a new era of industrial policy around the green transition and, set alongside the CHIPS Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, marks a wide shift in US policy. It has also triggered an anxious response from the EU with the Green Deal Industrial Plan (GDIP), and although they are often…

This week on the podcast, Associate Ross Nugent is joined by Senior Advisers Tiffany McDonald and Ong Kian Ming to discuss the UK's recent decision to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The CPTPP will give access to commerce with 11 Indo-Pacific countries, but what exactly does it mean for the UK's place in a post-Brexit world?

This week on the podcast, Conan D'Arcy is joined by Associate Josh Bates to check in on the UK's Online Safety Bill. The landmark internet safety legislation has advanced to the House of Lords, where further changes are expected to be proposed and debated while members approach the end of the parliamentary session and a looming general election. Meanwhile, social…

The agreement of the Windsor Framework on the Northern Ireland protocol is an important step towards ‘normalisation’ of relations between the EU and the UK. One immediate consequence has been speculation that the EU and the UK may disinter and sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on cooperation in financial services that stalled in mid-2021. While normalisation is…

The growing debate around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) has begun to focus increasingly on the question of cross-border payments. A number of pilots around the world have begun to test the practical questions of whether CBDCs can improve global trade invoicing. These discussions and the review of pilots have generally been confined to CBDC specialists and a…