And finally, the New York Times has reported on an indirect economic benefit being felt in the USA as it embraces a post-COVID remote working culture: a surge in demand for daytime cosmetics, pampering and leisure services.
The report cites examples of 55 people playing golf at Chelsea Pier before 4pm on a Monday afternoon and customers holding zoom meetings whilst having their hair done.
Laura joined Bermans in March 2023 and is a Partner in the Corporate team based in our Manchester office.
She obtained a degree in law at the University of Aberdeen and qualified as a solicitor in 2008. Laura has extensive corporate finance experience having worked previously in the corporate finance departments of two large Scottish law firms.
Laura’s most recent experience in-house in a head of legal transactions role means that she has experience of being in a client’s shoes and understands what a client is looking for from its legal advisors.
Laura specialises in mergers and acquisitions, private equity, reorganisations and general company law matters, with experience acting for companies, shareholders and private equity institutions.
The announcement by the FCA in late July last year of its final decisions on implementing the new Consumer Duty has led to a range of responses within the leasing and consumer credit industries.
The aim of the FCA is said to be to fundamentally improve how regulated firms serve consumers, by setting higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services and explicitly requiring regulated firms to put their customers’ needs first.
Asset financiers have not had much comfort from the sorry tale of the Arena TV fraud, but we did notice with interest a passage in a recent judgment against the main perpetrator individuals behind the fraud which illustrates the principle that in certain circumstances victims of fraud can trace assets such as foreign property which the fraudsters have obtained with the proceeds of the fraud.
On 9 December 2022 HM Treasury published a consultation paper on reform of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (“CCA”).
The Government announced its intention to reform the CCA in June 2022, with the ambition of moving most of the CCA from statute to FCA rules. Given the scale and complexity of this work, it is expected to take a number of years. The consultation paper is the first step in this process. In it, HM Treasury seeks views on the objectives, principles and overall direction of the proposed reform.
As long ago as 2001 in the landmark case of Royal Bank of Scotland Plc v Etridge [2001] UKHL 44 the House of Lords (since renamed the UK Supreme Court) significantly extended the circumstances in which a financier will be put on constructive notice of misrepresentation or undue influence committed against an individual executing a Guarantee or other security, but there remains a great deal of misunderstanding of the relevant principles.
Sections 100(1)(d) and (e) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 provide employees with protection from dismissal if they leave the workplace, refuse to return to it, or take other steps to protect themselves, if they reasonably believe there is serious and imminent danger. The first Covid-related claim of this nature reached the Court of Appeal in Rodgers v Leeds Laser Cutting. The employee worked in a large warehouse with few other employees. There were Covid-related safety measures in place even before the first lockdown, including extra cleaning and social distancing. The employee worked the first week of lockdown but then messaged his manager to say he wouldn’t be coming to work until lockdown eased. He was worried about passing on the virus to his vulnerable child. He was dismissed a month later and brought an unfair dismissal claim.
If an employee wins an unfair dismissal case, the employment tribunal will decide how much compensation is due. If the employer has made procedural errors during the dismissal, and the tribunal decides that the employee would have been dismissed anyway had a fair procedure been followed, the tribunal can reduce compensation to zero. This principle is known as the Polkey principle – named after the case from which the principle derived. The EAT has considered this issue recently in Teixeira v Zaika Restaurants.
The DWP has published its annual increases for various employment related pay rates which will take effect in April 2023. Statutory maternity, paternity, shared parental and parental bereavement pay will increase from £156.66 to £172.48. Statutory sick pay will go up from £99.35 to £109.40.
National minimum wage levels will also increase in April 2023:
COT3 settlement agreements, negotiated and arranged by Acas, can be a cheap and easy way to settle employment tribunal claims. The Court of Appeal has considered a case where an employee brought a claim after signing a COT3, the terms of which the employer said prevented him from bringing the claim. There is currently conflicting case law on the ability for settlement agreements to waive future, unknown claims. Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust v Howard said that if parties want to settle unknown future claims, the wording of the agreement must be absolutely clear on that. However, in Bathgate v Technip, the Scottish EAT said that the law did not allow parties to settle unknown future claims.
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