In The News

03 November 2020

Earlier this month credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the UK’s sovereign debt credit rating from Aa2 to Aa3 with the impact of Covid-19 a key factor in the decision. In June the International Monetary Fund forecast that the overall gross public-debt-to-GDP ratio of advanced economies would rise from 105% last year to 132% by 2021. This negative outlook is reflected […]

02 November 2020

On 15th October 2020 Europol announced the arrest of 20 individuals suspected of belonging to the QQAAZZ criminal network following an international law enforcement operation involving the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA). NCA Investigation | Rosenblatt’s Financial Crime Team The NCA announced it had arrested six men as part of the investigation, with a further 14 arrests made in Europe, […]

30 October 2020

Following an article published by Frances Murray of Rosenblatt’s Financial Crime department on 28th October 2020, the National Crime Agency (NCA) announced it had arrested a 52-year-old man from Hertfordshire in connection with allegations of Bounce Back Loan fraud. Criminal Proceedings | Rosenblatt’s Financial Crime Team The NCA said the man was arrested on 27th October 2020 at an address […]

Introduction On 23 October 2020, the European Commission published an Impact Assessment for consultation which reviewed possible policy options for a revision of Regulation 330/2010, the Vertical Agreements Block Exemption regulation (“VABE”). This paper has been in preparation for the last 2 years as the Commission has taken into account the views of manufacturers, brand owners, platform owners, distributors as […]

Cyber risk continues to be an ongoing concern for organisations, and firms need a more dynamic and comprehensive approach to tackling cyber threats. In this third session of Rosenblatt’s and Grant Thornton’s Financial Crime Resilience virtual event series, we discussed the evolving cyber threat, and offered insight into what we are seeing in the market. Watch the full Cyber session […]

29 October 2020

In this final session of Rosenblatt’s and Grant Thornton’s Financial Crime Resilience virtual event series, we will take a deep dive into data protection looking at the achievements and failures of data protection and where data privacy is going in the UK and globally. We will consider what the public wants and how should businesses respond. To register, click below: […]

Summary In this article, we consider the recent preliminary judgment of Mrs Justice Cockerill in Travelport Limited and others v WEX Inc.1, which concerned the construction and application of a material adverse change or effect provision (a “MAC Clause”) specifically in the context of COVID-19 in relation to an M&A transaction. If the courts decide that the MAC Clause has/had […]

28 October 2020

On 7th October 2020 the National Audit Office (NAO) announced up to 60 per cent of borrowers using the government’s Covid-19 Bounce Back Loan scheme could default on repayments due to fraud. Bounce Back Loan Fraud | Rosenblatt’s Financial Crime Team The NAO said the Bounce Back Loan scheme, which was launched in May 2020, could result in between £15bn […]

Every day, cybercriminals are attacking millions of homeworkers across the UK via email, SMS and calls. Any one of these attacks (named phishing, smishing and vishing) could compromise a company’s entire digital infrastructure and financial security. In April, Google reported blocking 100 million scam emails per day (18% of which were COVID-19 scams). Those were just the ones that didn’t […]

26 October 2020

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced on 22 October 2020 further changes to the Government’s Job Support Scheme (JSS) which comes into effect on 1 November 2020, significantly increasing the Government’s contribution and reducing the employer’s contribution to employee wages in the hope that increased support will prevent redundancies and save jobs during the second wave of the pandemic. Under the […]