Jonathan Berkson, (pictured) joined Bermans in June 2013 and is a Senior Partner in our Asset Based Lending and Litigation teams. We spoke to him to learn more about him and his work.
Invoice financiers grappling with the threats and opportunities posed by AI may be interested to learn of the impact AI, and in particular the recent developments in generative AI, are likely to have on their interactions with their lawyers and with the court system.
One of the most complex and uncertain areas of law which invoice discounters and their lawyers regularly have to deal with is transaction set off, namely the extent to which the customer’s claim arising from defective or late performance of the contract on which the relevant invoice is based can be set off against the value of the invoice.
Readers will be aware that it is very rare for a reported case in the higher courts dealing with invoice finance to emerge, so we were interested to see a report of a recent case in another area of financial services which raised squarely 2 legal concepts which are fundamental to invoice financiers:
Bhajan Khalsa joined Bermans in October 2023 and is currently a Trainee Solicitor in the ABL Litigation team in Manchester.
Bhajan deals with contentious and non-contentious matters. The contentious work he is involved in includes bringing/defending claims against directors arising out of insolvencies.
He completed the LPC at Huddersfield University and has previous experience working in asset finance and invoice finance work for a broad range of lenders.
There was a time some years ago when a major selling point of disclosed invoice finance was the perceived ability of established Invoice Financiers practised in the art of collecting debts when compared to the frequent troubles of small businesses in persuading their customers to pay on time.
UNIDROIT is a respected international organisation dedicated to the improvement of commercial law across its 65 member nations and beyond, and will be recognised by more established members of the invoice finance community (ie. older readers!) for its Convention on International Factoring which was adopted in 1988.
A recent decision in the Commercial Court provided some comfort to invoice financiers facing technical arguments in litigation as to the accuracy of invoices submitted to debtors
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Jonathan Berkson,