The Freshfields Podcast

Few people had experience of staging virtual shareholder meetings – then the pandemic struck in the middle of proxy season and everyone had to get up to speed overnight.

In the second episode of our governance mini-series, Pamela Marcogliese and Leza Bieber explore what we’ve learnt – and ask whether the traditional in-person model will ever return.

With so many disclosure requirements to satisfy and an ever-growing roster of stakeholders to inform, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to craft a coherent corporate narrative.

In the first of a new mini-series on governance, partner Pamela Marcogliese and counsel Leza Bieber explain how companies can get on the front foot, from working out what’s material to creating processes that keep everyone on message

Dawn Heath, a partner in our pensions team, is joined by Ali Sallaway, a partner in our global investigations and corporate crime team, to discuss the wider trend of criminalising corporate misconduct, and what we can expect to see in this area in relation to the new criminal offences to be introduced by the Pension Schemes Bill which is currently working through the UK Parliament.

This is part two of our first podcast in the series Navigating the US in which we will dig into the intricacies of dealing with and transacting with Silicon Valley counterparties.  Exploring what founders are looking for in potential investors and how to best traverse complex shareholder structures.

The first podcast in our series on navigating complexities for Asian companies in the US, discusses one of the world’s leading centres of innovation: Silicon Valley. This two-part discussion explores the post-election deal environment and how a new administration will impact cross-border investments between Asia and Silicon Valley.

Supply-chain risk has been rising up the boardroom agenda in recent years, with trade wars driving moves to ‘reshore’ production and the development of digital technologies such as AI enabling huge efficiency gains through process optimisation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many of these challenges even more to the fore and led companies to reconsider their approach to supply chain management. Rafique Bachour, Tim Wilkins and Theresa Ehlen discuss these challenges in particular around sustainability and digitisation.

With Joe Biden claiming victory in the US election, our partners from Frankfurt to Shanghai (with stops in Washington, New York and Menlo Park) discuss how the result changes the game for the global tech giants. Will it spark a run of divestitures and break-ups? Is Chinese investment back on the table? Will we see more protections for innovators? And how is the new administration viewed outside the US?

In this podcast, partner Will Thomas in London, and senior associates Natalie Sheehan in London and Amanda Neil in Vienna, outline the applicable legal landscape and examine how ESG issues are being dealt with by arbitral tribunals, legislators and policy makers. They also offer some insights on likely future trends.

As part of our ongoing review of whistleblowing culture over the years, we’ve gathered the views of over 2,500 individuals in the UK, US, Hong Kong, Germany and France to assess their attitudes towards whistleblowing, and to consider how these have changed since our last survey in 2017. 

Our report shows that there has been a general decrease in those who have been involved in whistleblowing, as well as a decline in confidence with regards to support from senior management for those who do blow the whistle.

In this podcast chaired by Stephanie Chiu and Nicola Jones, guest speakers Caroline Stroud and Holly Insley explore one of the aspects of this survey – how COVID-19 may have changed our attitudes towards whistleblowing. The speakers share their thoughts on the effect of COVID-19 on the speak-up culture and the number of whistleblowing investigations since the pandemic arose. They also discuss whether the whistleblowing trends of the survey are indicative of what we should expect in the future and the need to revise current whistleblowing procedures in order to align with the possibility of long-term remote working.

Regulators around the world are levying very significant fines on companies that lose personal data. In this podcast, Geoff Nicholas, Kim Zelnick, Giles Pratt and Rachael Annear – who together have advised on some of the biggest data breaches – share the inside track on preparing for and responding to a data crisis, including: dealing with the first 48 hours; co-ordinating regulatory responses globally; notifications and information-sharing with the authorities; mitigating risks, including for data subjects; and the impact on cyber due diligence in M&A transactions. For more information on this as well as other digital and technology-related topics, please visit the Freshfields TQ site.