Bermans is proud to be supporting Bruntwood SciTech’s ‘Manchester’s Female Founders Incubator programme’.
Who are Bruntwood SciTech?
Bruntwood SciTech is the UK’s leading developer of innovation districts, creating the specialist environments and innovation ecosystems for science and technology businesses to form, scale and grow.
The last month has seen two prominent North West brands, Pets at Home and Franchise Brands, announcing share buy-back programmes (see references below).
There are many benefits in undertaking this activity, including returning value to shareholders or providing an exit route. We do urge caution as, whilst the law and procedure for carrying out a share buyback is quite clear and straightforward, we have dealt with a number of instances where the validity of a share buyback has been questioned and further action required to be taken in order to rectify or ratify the validity of a buyback transaction.
This is our latest update as we draw near to the introduction of a “fixed costs” regime for most civil court disputes (including those involving businesses), where the amount at stake is over £10,000 up to £100,000.
A Manchester law firm made a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) in respect of the Bounce Back Loan scheme (BBLS), and the number of directors that were disqualified where the company had taken out a BBLS facility.
The response from the Insolvency Service published on 18 January 2023 provides insight into the largescale fraud and misuse of the scheme, since its inception in March 2020 following the Covid-19 pandemic, and the measures taken to clamp down on this abuse of the scheme. It found that the number of director disqualifications has more than doubled in just a year.
Our Asset Based Lending team lead by Alex Chapman and David Gledhill is delighted to have been ranked #1 lawyers in the Business Money Receivables survey.
Bermans team has consistently ranked #1 since 2018 in the Business Money poll and we are grateful to all our clients and contacts who responded to the poll and valued us so highly.
In the budget in March 2021, it was announced that Corporation Tax would be increased incrementally to 25%. After some uncertainty in the past year, as to whether this would proceed, the first increase took effect from 1 April 2023.
Emma Hulbert is Senior Principal Consultant at Lily Shippen Recruitment, a specialist agency for HR, admin and support teams.
Emma covers temporary, contract and permanent recruitment and manages the Virtual Assistant offering. Emma has been with Lily Shippen Recruitment since 2018 and has become the go-to person within the Manchester market, receiving five-star testimonials from clients and candidates. She is passionate about the business support profession and always strives to provide high-level and honest support, going above and beyond.
There have been some key updates in Employment Law recently, which may have flown under the radar with everyone gearing up to enjoy the Christmas and New Year holiday.
In this article, we summarise the key updates for your benefit.
Flexible working
On 5th December 2022, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) proposed to update the existing legal framework in respect of flexible working, as follows:
When businesses enter into contracts with one another, it is common for them to want their own terms and conditions (Ts&Cs) to apply to the contract. However, whether these have been successfully implemented into the contract often does not seem to be of concern to the parties until a dispute presents itself. Having the Ts&Cs adequately incorporated is especially important since it is common practice for businesses to conduct their dealings through contractual documents such as purchase orders and invoices rather than having an actual written contract in place. By not having a signed contract in place, the parties open up themselves to scrutiny over which party’s Ts&Cs are to prevail in case of a dispute.
Intellectual property (IP) covers ‘creations of the mind’ which can include inventions, designs, symbols and names and logos used in business. It is protected by law (copyright, trademarks, and various other forms), allowing people to earn recognition and/or money from what they create. Like other property, IP can be bought, sold, or licensed. There are different types of intellectual property rights including: