The promise of stablecoins has caught the attention of regulators and central banks. Our payments lawyers consider the regulatory response to stablecoins, including the potential for central bank digital currencies, and discuss how Covid-19 has impacted the UK payments regulators’ plans for the year to come.

In our first remotely recorded podcast we cover what Covid-19 means for payment services. Simon Treacy, Paul Harris and Jean Price talk about the practical challenges for firms, the latest regulatory developments and the potential commercial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

This month Simon Treacy, Jean Price and Harry Eddis discuss authorised push payment fraud and the measures that have been taken to try to tackle it, and consider what the regulatory focus on operational resilience means for the payments industry.

For our first episode of 2020 we look at one issue which will dominate the coming year and beyond, and pick up another which emerged at the end of 2019. Simon Treacy, Jean Price and Paul Harris discuss the latest on Brexit and how it will impact the payments industry, and highlight a Dear CEO letter from the FCA to the telecoms industry setting its expectations for firms wishing to rely on the electronic communications exemption under PSD2.

The second episode in our funds and financial sponsors antitrust and foreign investment podcast focuses on the UK’s proposed new foreign investment regime, with a deep dive into how the National Security & Investment Bill will apply to acquisitions and investments by financial investors.

In this episode, Anna Mitchell, Verity Egerton-Doyle and Jennifer Willis from the AFIG team discuss with Clare Baker from our Investment Funds group the key points investors and funds need to know about the UK's new and extremely wide-ranging foreign investment regime under the National Security & Investment Bill and how investment activity might be caught by the proposed rules. Given the radical change to scrutinising investments in the UK brought about by the Bill and serious penalties for non-compliance with the mandatory regime, make sure you tune in to this episode to get up to speed on what you need to know about the NSI regime when investing in the UK.

The first podcast in our series focuses on the expanded concept of parental liability for antitrust breaches established in a recent European Court of Justice judgment and the implications this has for financial investors, even those who generally invest via indirect minority stakes.

In this episode, AFIG Partners Jonas Koponen, Annamaria Mangiaracina, Anna Mitchell and Associate Jennifer Willis discuss why this case raised interesting questions about parental liability. They examine the factors that lead the Court to find the financial investor liable for its portfolio company’s infringement, the risk of having personal links between the financial investor and its board nominees and the increased importance of taking a more hands-on approach to antitrust compliance of portfolio companies. 

Ben Packer, Kerstin Wilhelm, Doug Davison and Andrew Chung discuss the trends in global anti-money laundering enforcement, while also looking at money -laundering techniques and, in particular, legislative developments in the US, UK, Germany and across Asia.

In our third podcast Andrew Chung, Michael Lamson, Eric Liu, Kerstin Wilhelm and Satindar Dogra explore the various sanctions developments around the globe, including US sanctions and the latest trends from the Biden administration, the PRC blocking regulation and sanctions in China. We also cover the EU Blocking Regulation and recent EU sanctions developments with a discussion of the post-Brexit UK sanctions regime and evolution of OFSI.

In this second episode of the Global Business Crime Outlook podcast series, Alison Saunders, Andrew Chung, Kerstin Wilhelm, Elly Proudlock, Sean Solomon and Eléonore Hannezo will each discuss key developments and trends taking place this year in their jurisdictions covering the UK, Asia and Europe.

In this first episode of our Global Business Crime podcast series, Ben Packer, Elly Proudlock and Clare McMullen look at how breaching the Money Laundering Regulations can lead to criminal charges, what this means in practice and how criminal prosecution differs from regulatory enforcement.