After nine years pursuing her claim against her employer, Michelle Alabaster walked away with an award of just £204.53.  However, the impact of the decisions of the ECJ, and now the Court of Appeal in the maternity pay case of Ala...

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Employers, the leasing industry, professional advisers and many government departments including the DTI, were taken by surprise when withdrawal of the tax relief on computers supplied to employees was announced in the recent Budget. Numerous re...

Government plans to ensure that workers don't have to take Bank Holidays as part of their annual leave will see the UK start to catch up with its European counterparts in terms of holiday provision. Currently up to two million workers in the UK hav...

December to April is bonus season. According to the latest annual report from the Office for National Statistics, bonuses for UK staff have reached a record £19 billion, a rise of £2.5 billion since last year. The forthcoming months will...

Following a government call to extend flexible working rights to all workers, including non-parents, employment law experts at Eversheds believe the move could prevent tensions arising between workers with children and those without. Research condu...

In a somewhat timely judgment, bearing in mind the May bank holidays, the Court of Session (the Scottish Court of Appeal) has clarified that it is not necessarily unlawful for an employer to not provide alternative leave days for part-time workers w...

The Chancellor has announced some important changes to the capital gains tax (CGT) regime. These changes may have a significant impact on the tax payable by your employees holding shares in your company traded on the full list. Abolition of taper r...

Good and bad news Yesterday, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced some changes to the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) legislation, which will impact on those companies operating EMI and those proposing to do so. The good news Under the cu...

Many employers offer flexible benefits packages to their workforce. But the Age Discrimination Regulations have cast a shadow over some schemes, leaving employers and providers unsure as to how benefits such as private medical insurance should be ac...

Gordon Brown has announced that the Government plans to introduce legislation giving new rights to agency workers and working parents in the next parliamentary session.  In addition, all workers are to be given the right to ask for time off wor...

The Government has today announced that from next April, the right to request flexible working will be extended to all parents of children aged up to 16 years. It is estimated that an additional 4.5 million parents will benefit from the right. Sinc...

If you have not yet responded to the Eversheds survey as to the likely impact of the changes to agency worker rights upon your business and would like to do so by 13 June, please click here.   Main body The topics of equal rights for age...

Pension Ombudsman determinations are a snap shot of issues which can and do arise in relation to the LGPS. This speedbrief looks at two recent determinations relating to the construction of the LGPS Regulations and the effect of in...

After what has already proved a busy week for employment law news, the Government has published its consultation response to the second round of consultation on Agency Worker Regulations, which closed in December last year. The...

VAT treatment of vouchers provided to employees under salary sacrifice You will no doubt have been made aware of the recent CJEU (formerly European Court of Justice) ruling in AstraZeneca. The case involved AstraZeneca and the retail vouchers that ...

Introduction The Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Bill 2011 (“the Bill”) was published on Friday 16 December 2011. The Bill is intended to give effect to an EU Directive (Directive 2008/104/EC) on...

Email scams are becoming more and more difficult to spot.  Hackers replicate genuine email traffic, posing as genuine suppliers providing invoices that appear genuine.  It is often only when the supplier chases on payment, which as far as...

Civil cases are usually built around two cornerstones: contemporaneous documents and witness statements. In 2019 the Business and Property Courts implemented a pilot with the aim of streamlining the process for the disclosure of contemporaneous docu...

As governments around the world battle to contain Coronavirus, the scale of economic disruption and impact on businesses cannot be underestimated. It is easy to see why some have predicted a rise in disputes work arising out of the unfolding global ...

Following the European and Belgian legislation on anti-money laundering, all Belgian enterprises that are not natural persons (companies, non-profit organisations, trusts, fiducies and similar entities) are obliged to register their ultimate benefic...

What is EIOPA? What is the purpose of the Guidelines? Who do they apply to? On 1 July 2019, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (“EIOPA”) published its consultation paper1 (the “<...

Overview On 28 November 2019, the European Banking Authority (“EBA”) published its final guidelines[1] on information and communication technology (“ICT”) and security risk management (EBA/GL/2019/04) (the “Guidelines&r...

As the outbreak of the latest coronavirus spreads across the globe, the consequences for commercial transactions are evolving. From what was initially a shorter term focus on immediate impact, all of us in business are now in the position of plannin...

1.1 Which Corona related administrative orders must be differentiated in Germany and what are their effects? The local health departments are, on a case-by-case basis, entitled to prohibit the happening of any kind of event that includes a significa...

1.1 What impact might production downtime or circumstances with similar effect have on supply contracts? Reduced production or similar measurements and resulting supply shortages can cause severe problems to distributors or intermediaries, as they ...

Introduction One of the many implications of the Coronavirus outbreak is a renewed focus on contract terms that allow suppliers early warning of customer financial difficulty. However, for suppliers of IT, English insolvency legislation prevents tho...

Introduction on e-signature In general terms, the use of any form of electronic signature (“e-signature(s)”) may be per se valid, binding and enforceable in Italy. The Italian Legislative Decree No. 82, dated March 7, 2005 (so-called &l...

The escalation of the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in many businesses being unable to perform their contractual obligations to their customers, whether by being unable to perform at all, or finding that they are having to delay performance signifi...

The director of cartels in the EU’s antitrust department, Eric Van Ginderachter, stated last week that the food sector in Europe will see increased cartel enforcement activity in 2014 by the European antitrust regulator, the European Commission (“Co...

The protection of brands is a key issue for many businesses, particularly for those brands which are consumer facing.   One aspect of brand protection is the protection of brands in domain names. Until recently, the number of generic top l...

Pensions Regulator publishes details of first enforcement action for auto-enrolment non-compliance The Pensions Regulator has published its first section 89 report relating to breaches of the aut...

During major sporting events, certain brands will actively pursue an “ambush marketing” strategy meaning that they will deliberately seek to associate their products with an event, despite not being one of the official sponsors. However,...

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The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) recently announced the intention of the Chinese competition authorities to step up the number of their investigations into possible anti-competitive and abusive market conduct.  Chinese co...

European Commission aims to level the playing field between suppliers and large customers by introducing recommendations on unfair trade practices The European Commission recently adopted a Communication encouraging EU Member States to look at ways ...

At the end of July, the US and the EU escalated their respective sanctions regimes against Russia following the Kremlin’s intervention in the Crimea/Ukraine crisis, as well as recent issues pertaining to access to the MH17 crash site. By annou...

The German Federal Cartel Office (“Bundeskartellamt”, BKartA) has issued a decision stating that attempts by Germany’s largest supermarket, EDEKA, to force suppliers to grant it so called “wedding rebates”, in the form ...

The Groceries Code Adjudicator (the “GCA”) was set up in June 2013 to ensure that large retailers with a turnover of over £1bn comply with the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (the “Code”). This statutory body h...

What is the Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme ("ESOS")? ESOS is the UK Government’s implementation of a particular requirement of the Energy Efficiency Directive regarding energy audits.  It requires energy assessments (including the ide...

Précis: The Courts have adopted a new test to assess applications for relief from sanctions, which demonstrates a more reasonable approach than used recently.  However, it remains important to ensure compliance. What? During litigation, ...

As of the 20th August 2014, businesses in Hungary are required to pay tax in connection with their advertising activities. The new legislation applies to individuals or organisations that publish adverts (“Publishers”);and place orders f...

“We want to ensure that these crimes don’t pay.” Michael Caplan QC, Sentencing Council Member In an era where price fixing and anti-competitive practices attract fines measured in billions, the disparity associated with sentencin...

Poland is set to enact regulations clarifying the position of an increasingly important corporate officer—the data protection official Poland’s Personal Data Protection Act currently contains just one provision referring to data protecti...

Starting 13 December 2014, businesses will be required to comply with the great majority of the rules set forth in the EU’s Food Information Regulation (1169/2011). The Regulation went into force on 12 December 2011 but provided for a long, 3-...

The French Competition Authority (FCA) is entitled to give advisory opinions on any competition matter, in particular for the attention  of the French Government and the Parliament. The FCA has been recently asked to give its opinion on coopera...

Last month, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) handed down its decision in the combined appeals in Bear Scotland Ltd v Fulton and Baxter; Hertel (UK) Ltd v Wood and others; and Amec Group Ltd v Law and others.  All three cases looked at the i...

Cyber risk is the risk of financial loss, disruption, or damage to reputation as a result of  breaches of data security, including unauthorised disclosure of data, and compromise or failures of IT systems.  Specific examples include: ...

The Smith Commission has today revealed that control of Employment Tribunals in Scotland is to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.  The move will mean Scotland will be able to decide the level at which fees are set for claims made in Scotla...