All articles by Eduardo Reyes – Page 33
-
News
Picture-perfect in-house advice
In-house counsel were last week urged to show the value they add ‘in pictures’ not ‘words’, to be better understood by the rest of their business. This was among the tips Richard Tapp, director of legal services at construction and support services giant Carillion, shared with 110 lawyers who attended ...
-
News
Jackson reforms: trials and tribulation
One could be forgiven for thinking the campaign to halt or defer the main planks of the civil justice reforms devised by Sir Rupert Jackson is still in full swing. To be fair to the refusniks, the impression that all was not settled has been given in part by the ...
-
News
Risk and Compliance conference
The Law Society has unveiled a new consulting service to help members meet their regulatory obligations. Launched at the Society’s annual Risk and Compliance conference, the service aims to provide clarity and reassurance to law firms, in particular through guidance to newly appointed compliance officers. ...
-
NewsRoundtable: diversity in the law
It is not enought to pay lip service to diversity when progress is so slow
-
News
All doomed?
Monday’s news that midlands firm Blakemores, with a headcount of 250-plus, is the subject of an SRA intervention – effectively confirming that the SRA believes that the firm’s finances mean it cannot safely continue to trade – may leave principals of smaller traditionally run firms, who are staring at diminishing ...
-
News
New order at Barclays
In the world of banking and financial services, 1999 was another age. Back in the day, as bankers and regulators grizzled with age may one day recall, international finance was able to weather storms such as the Asian financial crisis, a fall in confidence in Russian investments, and a burst ...
-
News
Personal devices are weakest security link
The largest international law firms are among the UK practices that have a poor grip on the security of their data, according to research conducted among 200 firms. The widespread use of personal devices is the weak link in security, with an overwhelming majority of professionals ...
-
News
Harassment, sexism and progression
In the past week the Liberal Democrats, for whom I once worked, have started to investigate and confront the way that complaints of sexual harassment by party figures were dealt with in the past – announcing two independent inquiries, one QC-led, and co-operating with the Metropolitan police. ...
-
News
The Eastleigh by-election could be improved by lawyers
Where are the lawyers of Eastleigh? Or more specifically, as Chris Huhne’s former constituency, site of a coming by-election, has 50 law firms within 4.5 miles of the town centre, why is no candidate in this election paying much attention to legal issues or the law? ...
-
News
Disclosure ruling rocks banks
Banks are struggling to control their liabilities following a Financial Services Authority finding that 90% of interest rate swaps (IRS) products banks sold to SMEs were in breach of regulatory requirements, and a judge’s ruling rejecting 24 Barclays employees’ demands for anonymity. Stephen Rosen, head ...
-
News
Barclays hunts for new GC as legal in-tray mounts
Barclays’ general counsel Mark Harding is to retire after a decade in the post, the bank announced. Group finance director Chris Lucas is also stepping down, though both senior executives will remain until successors are found. Commenting on the departures, ...
-
News
What Mid Staffs and RBS have in common
Banks and the health service were both in the news this morning – a £400m fine for state-owned RBS for Libor-fixing; and a damning report on failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust where, in addition to multiple failings, patient deaths were hundreds above what one would expect for the hospital’s ...
-
News
China arbitration fight rocks foreign firms
Fears are growing that arbitration decisions made in two of China’s economic powerhouses may be impossible to enforce as a result of a feud between rival arbitration centres. The dispute began with the release of new arbitration rules by the Beijing-based China International Economic and ...
-
News
Ask the staff
The annual civil service people survey is a great annual diversion, juxtaposing low levels of staff satisfaction and confidence in the Ministry of Justice’s leadership on the one hand, and hyper-positive confidence of senior management spin on the other. This year my colleague Catherine Baksi reported it as news - ...
-
News
Let it snow
How well did your firm or department cope with the snow? (Or how well are you coping? I realise it’s still very much there for some of you.) That’s not just a polite enquiry – though of course I do care – but I actually think ...
-
News
Does competition law suit the NHS?
Competition law seems especially vulnerable to ‘the law of unintended consequences’ in the current environment. This can be seen in operation, some argue, by the 8 January referral by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) of a proposed merger between two NHS trusts (located in Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch) to ...
-
News
Roundtable: market makers
A difficult economy combined with far-reaching changes in legal regulation has given the UK’s dominant legal market, England and Wales, the feel of a dramatic landscape heading into 2013. Commentators have taken to reaching for an impressive range of cliches and metaphors – from ‘perfect storm’ to ‘brave new world’, ...
-
News
What connects us: can the answer be human rights?
A rising tide of prosperity that floats all boats is no longer the glue that can hold our society together. Whatever the consensus was in the boom years around the greater good that could be derived from economic growth driven by personal atavism, to make the same argument at the ...