Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Introduction
In today’s digital society, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, data protection laws have become increasingly common, complex and wide-ranging. Given the high speed at which these laws are being introduced and evolve, arbitral participants’ knowledge about their data protection obligations, and the serious penalties they risk for failure to comply
[1], is seldom exhaustive and up-to-date.
Several of the major arbitral rules and guidance have been updated in the last two years and now include a general requirement for tribunals and parties to consult and address data protection issues early on during an arbitration
[2].
Participants”)
[3] have numerous data protection obligations, which may compete and overlap, creating a complex compliance framework, especially in disputes that typically involve a significant amount of personal data, such as large-scale construction, technology and digital information disputes.
Wikborg Rein, an international law firm headquartered in Oslo, has appointed Eleanor Midwinter as a partner in its London office, effective May 1.
Midwinter joined the firm as a senior lawyer in February 2017, and since then has played a key role in consolidating its offering within international trade, energy and shipbuilding. Her contractual work is focused on the trade, transportation and storage of physical commodities, particularly LNG, oil and alternative fuels.
Prior to joining Wikborg Rein, Midwinter worked as a senior associate at HFW within the UK-based trade and energy and commodities teams. During that time she completed an in-house secondment within oil and gas trading company MET Group.
Supermarket chain Tesco has become the first UK retailer to offer sustainability-linked supply chain finance (SCF) to its supply base, through a new programme with Santander.
The voluntary programme, which has been in development for 18 months and is due to launch in September, will see Tesco’s suppliers get preferential financing rates via Santander’s SCF platform if they meet targets around carbon data disclosure, emissions reduction and progress against sustainability goals.
“In this critical year for climate action, we’re delighted to be able to offer thousands of suppliers access to market-leading SCF linked to sustainability,” says Ashwin Prasad, chief product officer at Tesco. “This programme not only provides suppliers with a real incentive to set science-based emissions reduction targets, but will also help embed sustainability goals throughout our supply chain and support the UK in realising its climate change targets.”
Two directors have stood down from the board of Singapore-based fintech Triterras following a disagreement over the company’s response to allegations of related party transactions.
Triterras says in a regulatory filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Matthew Richards and Vanessa Slowey resigned as directors on April 22. The duo have also terminated their membership of the company’s audit and compensation committees.
Richards’ resignation letter, addressed to Triterras chief executive and chairman Srinivas Koneru, says the decision was taken after a meeting of the board of directors on April 21.
“It is clear that the chairman and the company’s interim general counsel’s office have very different views to my own as to the optimal path forward for the company at this extremely challenging time,” he writes.
US law firm Arent Fox has made three new hires in its international trade and investment practice.
David Tafuri (pictured), who has been named as a partner, joins the firm from Dentons, where he chaired the emerging democracies practice. His prior experience also includes seven years as partner at Squire Patton Boggs, and before this he served as rule of law coordinator for Iraq at the US Department of State, where he worked directly with the chief justice of Iraq and Iraqi ministries to help rebuild the country’s legal system.
Based out of Arent Fox’s Washington DC office, Tafuri works with clients in frontier markets to solve complex problems at the intersection of law and diplomacy.