Best legal reads of the week: April 13-17
Published on 17th Apr 2015
In this week’s edition of Osborne Clarke’s best reads, we have a diverse range of news and views from around the web written for you by Osborne Clarke’s people.
Here are the must read posts of the week…
April is a busy month in employment law. A number of new rates and limits have come into force and the shared parental leave regime is now up and running. As well as keeping an eye on the various employment law issues creeping into the general election debate (see here and here) and the ongoing holiday pay saga (see here), cases to watch out for this month include the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) decision in the “Woolworths” case on collective redundancy consultation expected on 30 April 2015. Read the full article here.
From April 2016 state pension reforms will come into force, with the removal of the state second pension (S2P) and introduction of the single-tier state pension. A consequence of this is that contracting-out from S2P on a defined benefit (DB) basis will be abolished from 5 April 2016. This has a number of implications for affected schemes, which trustees and employers need to be addressing now. In this update we look at what schemes are affected, what issues this raises, and the steps that need to be taken.
It is four years since Lord Davies published his “Women on Boards” review, setting out recommendations aimed at increasing the number of women on listed company boards. March 2015 saw the publication of the latest annual review of progress made on those recommendations. Read our article setting out where we are today, here.
Paul Brodrick, Head of Connected Communities at Siemens Energy Management discusses how we unlock finance to fund smart city development. Watch the video here.
Every director of a UK company will have to be a living, breathing person under changes to company law made by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015. Subject to any exceptions to be set out in regulations (which have not yet been published), it will no longer be possible for a company to act as a director of a UK-incorporated company. Currently, UK companies must have at least one natural director but the other directors may be non-natural entities. Read more here.
In this post, Robert Wood and Mathias Loertscher look at convertible loans and loan notes and their particular use in VC-backed companies. Read it in full on LinkedIn here.
