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Global rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)
Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
United Kingdom | Publication | July 2023
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 makes provision for major changes to the content and operation of retained EU law and to rules of priority and interpretation. These changes will leave the meaning of some UK law (including Acts of Parliament) uncertain until resolved by the courts under the new rules.
Royal Assent was received on June 29, 2023, and while much of the Act is now in force, many of the changes will not take place until the end of 2023. The “sunset” provision in the original Bill has been removed, under which certain EU-derived legislation would have been automatically revoked at the end of 2023 unless explicitly saved. While no pensions law is due to be revoked in this first wave, the Government intends to continue to review the remaining EU-derived law to identify further opportunities for reform.
However, the Act does remove the compulsion for Government departments to implement EU case law that was decided before December 30, 2020. This means that many EU pensions decisions will be revoked unless Government specifically makes “restating” regulations to retain them before the end of 2023.
Several EU decisions affect the levels of PPF compensation available, although in a recent House of Lords debate, the Government said that it intended to retain the Hampshire judgment which provides that members should not receive less than 50 per cent of their accrued pension.
If restating regulations are not made in respect of the Walker (equalisation of same-sex survivor benefits accrued prior to 2005) and Allonby (GMP equalisation) and Barber (retirement age equalisation) considerable uncertainty will arise.
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Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
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On February 2, 2024, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union confirmed that the Committee of Permanent Representatives had signed the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Regulation, referred to as the AI Act. Approval by the EU Parliament followed on 13 March 2024, and the AI Act is likely to appear in the EU’s Official Journal around May 2024. The AI Act aims to establish a stringent legal framework governing the development, marketing, and utilisation of artificial intelligence within the region, thereby marking a significant advancement in the regulation of this burgeoning domain.
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The private credit market and direct lending have grown and diversified immensely in the past decade, offering alternative sources and terms of debt compared to those historically provided by the syndicated leveraged loan and public issuance markets. Consequently, they are fast becoming pivotal components in the capital ecosystem, so much so that the Bank of England consider that the private credit market is currently responsible for approximately $1.8 trillion of debt issuance, which is four times its size in 2015. This growth has been particularly pronounced in Europe and the US but there has also been significant activity in Asia.
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