JD Supra European Union › Ropes & Gray LLP

• JD Supra European Union

The Cayman Islands has been placed on the EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions as a result of a failure to introduce new laws relating to private funds within the necessary timescale. The Cayman Islands government has, however, already contacted EU officials to begin the process of being removed from the EU list, which is expected to be October 2020.

• JD Supra European Union

Ropes & Gray’s Derivatives & Commodities Group looks ahead to what is in the pipeline in Europe for 2020...

• JD Supra European Union

The EU’s e-Privacy Regulation was supposed to take effect alongside the General Data Protection Regulation in May 2018. The e-Privacy Regulation covers not only personal data but all access of a user’s equipment, which is usually made in relation to the placement of cookies, as well as issues relating to the use of email for commercial marketing and telecommunications. As the GDPR was required to

• JD Supra European Union

Welcome to the first edition of Asset Management in Focus, a quarterly review of European regulatory issues. As the European regulatory landscape continues to evolve, we appreciate the challenges asset managers face staying on top of new developments. With this in mind, we have designed this review to provide you with user-friendly overviews of issues relevant to your business. Please...

• JD Supra European Union

The EU has now adopted supplementary rules on how funds are marketed to professional investors in the EU that the European Parliament voted on in April this year.

• JD Supra European Union

On April 10, 2019, the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (the “EU Commission”) issued new guidance (the “Q&A”) on the interaction between the Clinical Trials Regulation (EU) 536/2014 (“CTR”) and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“GDPR”). The Q&A discusses, among other topics, appropriate bases for processing of personal data in the...

• JD Supra European Union

EU policy makers recently reached a provisional agreement on a package of measures, which may tighten UK financial services firms’ access to EU clients when Britain leaves the EU, setting out legislative proposals for new prudential requirements for investment firms.

• JD Supra European Union

On 23 January 2019, the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision in relation to Japan, creating, in the words of Justice Commissioner Vera Jourová, “the world's largest area of safe data flows”.

• JD Supra European Union

Two key European Union bodies have told the European Commission that they will not approve its draft adequacy decision on the protection of personal data afforded by Japan until their concerns are addressed.

• JD Supra European Union

In this update, Ropes & Gray’s investment management and cybersecurity initiative examines the impact of the GDPR on the funds industry, with a focus on the regulation's effect on non-EU-based funds and advisors. Given that one of the express aims of the GDPR is to broaden the territorial scope of the European privacy regime, processing activities of funds and advisers are covered if the fund

• JD Supra European Union

Article 30 of the GDPR contains an obligation for data controllers and processors to maintain a record of processing activities in certain circumstances. However, there are exceptions to the requirement, known as the derogation. The derogation essentially exempts micro, small and medium-sized organisations from this recordkeeping requirement. There are, however, certain types of processing, such...

• JD Supra European Union

WhatsApp has recently faced scrutiny by regulators about data processing consents it purported to obtain from users. Most recently, on March 15, the Spanish data protection authority (“AEDP”) released a decision imposing the maximum fine of €300,000 against Facebook and WhatsApp for processing personal data without consent. The AEDP found that WhatsApp did not receive valid consent to process...

• JD Supra European Union

The unveiling of the EU tax haven blacklist was covered in our Alert dated 12 December, 2017. While the consequences of a jurisdiction being on the blacklist remain largely unclear, clients may wish to review whether they have transactions which involve blacklisted jurisdictions and to consider carefully the uncertainty and possible reputational consequences of undertaking new transactions...

• JD Supra European Union

The EU’s data protection advisory body, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (WP29), has adopted Guidelines on the application and setting of administrative fines for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679/EU. Administrative fines are described in the introduction as central to enforcement and “a powerful part of the enforcement toolbox of the DPAs”. The...

• JD Supra European Union

After months of screening global tax policies by the European Council’s Code of Conduct Group, the EU has finalised its tax-haven blacklist – a list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, which currently comprises the following 17 jurisdictions: American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, Macao SAR, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, South...

• JD Supra European Union

On November 29, 2017, the European Commission published its long-awaited guidance on litigating and licensing standard-essential patents (SEPs), as part of broader guidelines for intellectual property in the European Union (EU).

• JD Supra European Union

Asset managers located inside and outside the European Union (“EU”) should be aware of the changing regulatory status of EU local authorities, and their pension funds, under the next iteration of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (“MiFID II”), that applies on 3 January 2018.

• JD Supra European Union

Asset managers located inside and outside the European Union (“EU”) must comply with the new “point of sale” disclosure requirements that will apply when they distribute financial products, and investment services, to EU investors and clients.

• JD Supra European Union

On 5 September 2017, in the case of Barbulescu v Romania (Application no. 61496/08), the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights reversed a First Chamber decision and found that the Romanian courts, in reviewing the decision of a private company to dismiss an employee after having monitored his communications on an online messaging service, failed to strike a fair balance between the...

• JD Supra European Union

In late May, the European Union published the final text of its recently adopted conflict minerals regulation (the “Regulation”), which was more than seven years in the making. On almost a daily basis, we are asked by clients what, if anything, they should be doing under the Regulation. In this Alert, we provide a deep dive on the Regulation – in an easy-to-follow Q&A format – and take-aways...

• JD Supra European Union

EU and UK antitrust laws make it illegal for dominant firms to charge unfair or excessive prices. These laws have most often been applied in markets that feature high barriers to entry or expansion, which enable a dominant firm to charge supra-competitive prices free of competitive challenge.

• JD Supra European Union

The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) visited Washington in the last week of July, not for a summer holiday, but to discuss the upcoming Privacy Shield review with the new US administration. Also on the agenda were counter-terrorism and immigration. For transatlantic data flows, the outcome of the meeting between the delegation of European Parliament

• JD Supra European Union

The Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) has published its final policy statement on implementation of the revised EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (“MiFID II”), which takes effect in the EU in January 2018.

• JD Supra European Union

The European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) released an opinion today on supervisory convergence in the context of the UK withdrawing from the European Union (“EU”). The opinion is addressed to national regulators, and contains nine principles for national regulators to follow when authorising and supervising firms that are seeking to re-locate in the EU from the UK. ESMA has issued...

• JD Supra European Union

The General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) came into force in May 2016 and makes numerous changes to European data protection laws. Among other things, the GDPR updates the rules on the use of consent by data controllers to justify their processing of personal data in various circumstances. The UK Information Commissioner’s (the “ICO”) consultation on its draft GDPR Consent Guidance (the

• JD Supra European Union

The European Commission recently published a proposed Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications (the “Regulation”). The Regulation aims to update and broaden the scope of current rules under the ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC) on confidentiality of electronic communications as well as align the rules for electronic communications, cookie usage and direct marketing with the forthcoming...

• JD Supra European Union

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and the Council of 27 April 2016, (the “GDPR”) came into force in May 2016 and introduced a number of changes to European data protection law. Such changes will impact upon many entities conducting business within the European Union, (the “EU”) however, the implications for organizations operating in the life sciences and healthcare sectors are...

• JD Supra European Union

The European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”) published on 30 January 2017 an opinion on the use by EU UCITS funds of share classes, outlining four key principles that all UCITS funds must follow when setting up different share classes, and considering whether certain existing share class hedging techniques comply with such principles. The opinion particularly impacts share classes that...

• JD Supra European Union

On 23 November 2016, the European Central Bank (“ECB”) published for consultation draft guidelines on leveraged transactions (“Draft Guidance”), similar to the US Guidance on Leveraged Lending issued by the US federal bank regulatory agencies in 2013 (“US Guidance”). The aim of the Draft Guidance is to promote sound origination and distribution practices in the leveraged lending market....

• JD Supra European Union

In an earlier Alert, Non-Performing Loans and Securitisation in Europe, dated April 7, 2016, we examined the basic structure of an NPL securitisation and the importance of the servicing function in the operational success of such a transaction. As the global financial crisis has left many countries with significant levels of NPLs, particularly in south and eastern Europe, techniques to...