Conference programme

International franchise agreements tend to be long standard forms used across the world by the franchisor. In many regions, such as Latin America, (master) franchisees are large group corporations (conglomerates) with sizeable to large bargaining power. How to navigate negotiations without allowing to many deviations from the franchise system and uniform contracting practices?

The development of any new power facility typically requires thorough environmental assessments and community consultations to identify and mitigate potential environmental and social impacts, which result in a constraining consultation and permitting process. It also requires providing long-term benefits to the local community through job creation, skill development and community investment to ensure the project’s acceptance and integration. This session will explore, based on the experience of various jurisdictions, how local integration can be best achieved.

Costs (especially salaries) for law firms are going up, revenues are flat or dropping. This means margins are reduced and for the first time ever for many partners, profits are reduced. How do law firms best survive and indeed flourish in this changing world? We are moving from lawyers ‘have never had it so good’ (during the Covid-19 pandemic) to law firms risking failure and/or partner departures due to not managing profit.

This session will give you some ideas as to how to avoid margin squeeze, how to keep your firm profitable and how to avoid losing the most productive partners.
 

This panel will create a crisis scenario in which different corporate executives, including general counsels and compliance officers, will discuss the different aspects and best management options in a corporate crisis.

Consideration of permanent establishment (PE) issues, exit taxes, flips and other transformative events.  

Does artificial intelligence (AI) (also generative) already have a role in advocacy? Could AI help prepare a case, eg drafting a line of questions for a cross-examination? Can AI help be effective and sharp in arguments? Is AI-generated advocacy persuasive? Does AI improve efficiency? Are there ethical issues to be considered? Is AI only a tool for rich companies, to the detriment of less developed entities/counsel?

Increasingly more protectionist policies are adopted across the globe which affects business ability to make deals (new FDI and FSR regimes, etc.) and to access markets (IMEC v. BRI, security restrictions for hardwares sales, etc.). This session will look at how this trend towards deglobalisation is affecting the communications sector.

This session will cover:

•    Assessing the value of closely held businesses;
•    identifying and addressing operational, governance and regulatory issues;
•    finding the most appropriate deal structure;
•    the role of technology in preparing for a sale;
•    transitioning ownership and leadership;
•    getting prepared for buyer scrutiny; and
•    anticipating post-sale integration issues.

Enforcement against anti-competitive hiring practices is now firmly established as a global trend. Labour issues have now arisen in the spheres of anti-cartel enforcement, merger control and abuse of dominance. Our panel will provide an update on global developments and consider the practicalities. Should agencies characterise ‘no poach’ agreements as per se violations? What are the main drivers of non-compliance in this area and how can in-house counsel work with human resources (HR) teams to ensure their conduct does not cross the line?

Regulating supply chains by imposing responsibility on businesses with regard to environmental, social and human rights issues has become a global trend. In a first wave, legislators have tried to use supply-chain related laws to prevent illegal deforestation of rain forests or the sourcing of conflict minerals from regions where profits fund armed conflict. Recently, this concept has been broadened to cover all major supply chains. Even though just a few countries (eg, Germany) have implemented such laws, the concept has become truly infectious, spreading along supply chains all around the globe. In the next step, climate legislation will apply this instrument: the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). CBAM will impose price adjustments on imports of designated goods into the EU, based on the CO2 emissions in production outside the EU. The session will focus on the concepts underlying these developments. What are the standards of diligence? How do businesses and governments cope with information gaps? What is the role of certificates?

Which project/budget security instruments are available (ie, bonds, retention, security, insurance) and what remedies against bankruptcy are available to secure a proper financial execution of an infrastructure or construction contract?

Over the course of the two decades of this century, we have seen the rise of the corporate player in immigration detention centres across various jurisdictions. This session will explore the challenges and governance of immigration detention centres, concepts of arbitrary detention and its violations arising worldwide, rights of detainees and potential solutions.

In this interactive session jointly moderated by the Real Estate Section and the Insolvency Section a panel of experts from around the globe will discuss a case study of a major development project in financial distress and the best legal practices available in their jurisdictions to mitigate damages and losses in such case. 
 
The panel will consider the case study from the viewpoints of various stakeholders to the distressed project including developer, consumers, lender, contractor, landlord and insolvency professional, and will give their expert views on how best to advise those stakeholders and at what stage of the project in order to avoid so far as possible adverse financial and reputational damage for their client. 

All firms have partners that make enormous contributions to their firms. (If not, they should not be partners!) What happens when these partners retire? Different firms have different approaches. Many large firms adopt the “cliff” approach – you are no longer a partner so goodbye. At the other extreme some firms allow partners to linger for ever – but to what avail?  

This session will hear some real life stories and will then debate what best practice should be. Within this discussion we will draw out the pros and cons for the firm and for the retiring partner – and the mismatch these opposing views might give rise to and the question of “fairness” between partners.  We will also discuss whether age discrimination legislation helps or hinders the issue.

Hopefully, this debate will provide food for thought for both managing partners as to the best way of retaining the value of retiring partners and equally importantly the thought processes that retiring partners should go through about the value they can best add.

Digital assets and the future of financial services

The rise of the digital economy in the second decade of the 21st century is significantly transforming the global financial markets. Innovative technologies in the form of, for instance, blockchain and distributed ledgers and digital assets held and/or traded on them, are offering fundamentally new ways to provide financial services, disrupting traditional trading, investment, payments, borrowing and saving, with the potential for enhanced efficiency, speed and accessibility. The panels in this showcase session will aim to address the above issues, key opportunities and risks and other key developments as outlined in the following topics:

Introduction:  Klaus Löber, ESMA, Paris (Banking and Financial Law Committee)

Session 1 [1430-1515] Digital assets – what are they and how have they already become relevant?  

• What are the new types of digital assets (crypto currencies and stablecoins, digital assets (representing real world assets or entitlements), utility tokens (intended to provide digital access to an application or service), NFTs? What is their interplay with traditional financial instruments and commodities through digitisation (central bank digital currencies, digital securities, tokenised deposits, crypto commodities)? 

• Adapting private law to the digital asset ecosystem - how to reconcile digital ecosystems such as distributed ledgers, DeFi or smart contracts with existing private law and conflicts of laws regimes?   

• Use of digital assets in financial transactions (custody, collateral, securitisation, derivatives, etc.) 

Q & A interaction 

Moderator:
- Benjamin Leisinger, Homburger, Zurich (Securities Law Committee)

Speakers:
- Chris Brummer, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC
- Mario Hoessl-Neumann, BitPanda/One Trading, London
- Linda Jeng, Digital Self Labs LLC, Washington DC
- Miguel Gallardo Guerra, BGBG, Mexico City 

Session 2 [1515-1600] The impact of digital assets on the financial system 

• The impact of decentralisation and distribution on the financial ecosystem: issues of fragmentation, reliance on third party services, governance, responsibility of identifiable entities, etc. 

• Are traditional intermediaries obsolete? 

• Digital currency or AI-powered digital marketplaces (applications, e.g. infrastructures, insurance, financial services) and machine learning models (e.g. verifying integrity of credit scoring models or securing data processing) 

• The illicit use of digital assets through fundraisings to finance criminal and/or terrorist activities 

Q & A interaction 

Moderator: 
- Theodor Härtsch, WalderWyss, Zurich (Capital Markets Forum)

Speakers: 
- Dan Konar, Stellar Development Foundation, Chicago
- Christian Sabella, DTCC, New York
- Nicole Dyskant, Dyskant Avogados, Rio de Janeiro  
- Ben Aldersey, FATF, Paris
- Lizette Neme, InStrag Public Affairs & Law, Mexico City

Break [1600-1620] 

Keynote intervention [1620-1640]

Policy discussion: The future of digital finance (decentralisation vs centralisation, public vs private sector, central bank digital currencies, macroeconomic impact on “real” economy) 

• Jon Frost, Bank for International Settlement, Mexico City  

Session 3 [1640-1730] Regulatory responses and private law remedies 

• Preventing systemic risk from crypto activities and regulatory responses (domestic and globally) 

• The importance of adapting and harmonising legal regimes  

• Application of insolvency regimes to digital asset businesses; segregation of digital assets held by custodians, recovery of digital assets 

• Private litigation and criminal prosecution  

• The impact on legal professionals and the wider legal profession (e.g.  opinions on holding, pledging, payments and settlement of crypto and digital assets, legal certainty regarding privilege and confidentiality of communication on DLT) and how lawyers can drive positive change for their clients 

Q & A interaction 

Moderator: 
- Giorgio Bovenzi, Haynes Boone, New York (Banking and Financial Law Committee) 

Speakers: 
- Luis Urrutia, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC 
- Drew Hinkes, K&L Gates, Miami
- Lee Pascoe, Norton Rose Fulbright, Melbourne (Insolvency Section)
- Mauro Wolfe, Duane Morris, New York (Criminal Law Committee) 
- Anurag Bana, International Bar Association, London

Wrap-up: Klaus Löber, ESMA, Paris (Banking and Financial Law Committee)