Perspectives – Legal Developments Series

The global increase in regulatory and reputational risk stemming from proliferating legal requirements creates unique challenges for the healthcare sector. Our global panel will survey compliance and governance trends relating to greenwashing, use and protection of data, use of AI, and geopolitical change, and discuss how compliance structures built for concerns such as anticorruption and reimbursement fraud may or may not be fit to address today’s opportunities and threats.

This summer saw the most significant changes to the listing regime affecting London-listed companies and IPO candidates, in 40 years. In this session we will assess the impact for issuers, their directors, investors, advisers and deal counterparts. A particular focus will be on expected market practice in the context of M&A and other significant transactions involving a London-listed bidder, including strategy dynamics, investor engagement ahead of deals and the new role of sponsors and other advisers. We will also look ahead to the broader reform of the UK capital markets ecosystem.

Our panel will discuss early lessons from applying the German Supply Chain Act, the French Vigilance Law, the EU Deforestation Regulation, the Battery Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

We will discuss lessons learned and the best strategies for defending collective actions across major jurisdictions including the UK, the US, the Netherlands and Australia. We will consider developments in stock-drop, antitrust and climate change claims, how collective actions are playing out in the courts and the strategies clients can deploy when responding to these claims.

With the rise of AI, demand for data continues to grow exponentially raising questions as to how the rapid roll-out and development of data centres will be financed over the next five to 10 years. Our European lawyers across infrastructure finance, project finance, real estate finance and asset backed finance will discuss the innovative financing structures we see for data centres including Europe’s first public data centre ABS and share views on financing trends in the digital infrastructure sector.

Trade secrets can account for a large proportion of a company’s value. The recent EU Trade Secrets Directive has imposed new obligations on trade secrets owners when protecting their assets, and caseloads are increasing in the UK and Asia. Lawyers from Europe and APAC will discuss the following topics: hard-learned lessons from litigation using real-world examples of disputes; technological means for identifying trade secrets theft and how to gather solid evidence of misappropriation; and how to implement practical and legal protections to avoid the loss of trade secrets and prevent disputes from the outset.

In this session we will examine what the Purdue case really means for the ongoing viability of Chapter 11 as a restructuring process of choice and whether it will now lead US and other investors to place greater reliance on the established restructuring tools and procedures available in the UK and across the EU.

Organisations developing, deploying or using AI systems and tools must navigate privacy, data protection and cybersecurity requirements alongside AI-specific regulations. These parallel, and at times overlapping, frameworks and rules raise new challenges but also enable fresh opportunities for organisations. Our global panel will share practical and market insights at the intersection of these developments, including in the context of governance and compliance programmes, risk management and contractual negotiations.

CRD6 will create new requirements for non-EU banks offering services on a cross-border basis to EU clients from 2026. Our panel of regulatory specialists will examine the new regime in detail, with a focus on scope, exemptions, issues to look out for in national implementation, and the impact on currently used cross-border arrangements. We will also discuss the new CRD6 provisions governing EU bank branches. In particular, we will consider the new restrictions from both the bank and borrower perspective, including bank implementation challenges and how some borrowers are thinking about the restrictions and how to adapt to them. We will get input from panellists representing key jurisdictions including France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

We have seen a variety of liquidity solutions being utilised during the past 24 months, as private markets experienced a period of adjustment to a “new normal” of slower dealmaking, exits and fundraising, coupled with largely challenging IPO conditions. Our global panel will discuss the state of the market for liquidity solutions, covering key terms and trends across continuation funds, securitisations and NAV and other fund-level financings. As markets begin to show encouraging signs of recovery, we will also examine whether such liquidity solutions are a temporary coping mechanism or a permanent set of new tools, and what this means for managers seeking to differentiate their offerings and strategies.

The benefits of using blockchain or distributed ledger technology for bond issuances into the capital markets is a topic that has garnered strong interest in recent years. Our panellists will look at the latest legal, regulatory and market developments that have shaped the digital bond landscape, explore what the future for digital bonds may look like, and discuss how true scaling of the digital bond ecosystem may be achieved in the years to come.

The returning M&A market and the need for strategic and financial acquirors alike to find growth opportunities outside of their home markets are leading to a resurgence of interest in cross-border M&A. Buyers, sellers and other stakeholders involved in these investments need to navigate competing laws, market norms and regulatory regimes across global jurisdictions in order to successfully execute transactions. Our panel will look at the latest M&A market dynamics in the UK, US and Europe, and how these are impacting key deal and market terms. 

New technologies, major shifts in the global regulatory landscape, and the need for digital resilience require global enterprises to fundamentally rethink their outsourcing strategies and outsourcing relationships. In this session, we will look at the key trends and developments that are shaping the future of outsourcing and the strategies that organisations can adopt to meet these new challenges.