Convergence Conversation

Today’s blog post is courtesy of my friends and colleagues Clive Gringras and Claire Walker who have published a helpful guide to the new European Data Protection proposals.

“Today, 25 January 2012, the European Commission unveiled its proposals for far reaching changes to EU privacy legislation.

We foresee the Regulation being in force by 2015. Every aspect of an organisation’s compliance obligations will increase – and there will be fines of up to 2% of global turnover for breach. We highlight the top three immediate action points to consider. We also provide seven further action points to address in the months ahead. More...

The judgement of India’s Supreme Court on 20 Jan in the Vodafone tax case, removes (at least for now) some of country-specific risk that has been holding back investment by multi-national companies in India. Reduction in perceived risk is likely to encourage more investment in India by multi-national companies, particularly as Indian growth is driven to a greater extent than many other economies by domestic demand, and so is less correlated with a Euro-zone slowdown (or, if things go really badly, Eurozone plummet).

In good lawyerly fashion I should start with a disclaimer – I am neither an Indian lawyer, nor a tax lawyer so anyone wanting to explore the finer points of Indian tax law should look elsewhere (a number of Indian law firm have produced useful detailed case notes). More...

Apologies to readers for the long hiatus between recent blog posts. With hindsight (and English understatement), I may have rather underestimated the time that would be taken up in relocating personally from London to Singapore to set up our office there. It is not without irony that I find the time to write this by being ‘snowed in’ in the European Alps.

It is traditional at this time of year to look back at the events of the year just gone and to look forward to the new new year. For the press in general, there seems to be a broad consensus that 2011 was the year when social media came of age playing a very large part in the changes described as the ‘Arab Spring’ whilst the sad demise of Steve Jobs means that the world has lost a innovator who I suspect that history will compare with Watt, Edison and Ford. More...

Having recently relocated to Singapore to set up my firm’s first office in Asia, I have been rather quiet on the blogging front recently. This post serves as something of a reboot – the blog will continue with its theme of the intersection of business, law and regulation in the telecoms and technology sectors but in addition to continued coverage of the UK and Europe will have an increasingly Asian focus.

It has been an interesting time to be in the region with President Obama spending far more time at the APEC  and ASEAN summits that I can ever recall him spending at European meetings and with the US administration signalling a ‘pivot towards Asia’ in their policy focus. More...

Mobile payment is a topic close to my heart, so I am delighted to be joining a distinguished panel at the International Bar Association’s annual conference in Dubai this afternoon to discuss developments in mobile payment from a comparative perspective. The session is being run jointly by the communications, banking and technology committees of the IBA and that theme of the collision of world-views from players in the different eco-systems (traditional payment, mobile and online) is a consistent theme that arises in the business, as well as the legal, context of this topic.

The panel consists of: More...

On 7 October Ofcom announced that the already much delayed 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz Uk spectrum auctions would be delayed. This follows on from prior delays, but follows responses to Ofcom’s prior consultation that clearly raised significant issues.

The next stage will be a further consultation by the end of the year with a decision from Ofcom in summer 2012 and auctions to take place at the end of the year.
Filed under: EU, Technology, UK Tagged: spectrum auction

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