Doing business responsibly

We live in a con­nec­ted glob­al en­vir­on­ment where the num­ber and com­plex­ity of in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions is ever in­creas­ing.  As a con­sequence, the policies and activ­it­ies in one area of the world can...

 We are pleased to share with you our latest CMS thought lead­er­ship – Di­git­al Ho­ri­zons, a series of brief re­ports ex­plor­ing CEE’s di­git­al fu­ture.  Based on a re­cent sur­vey can­vassing the views of...

The gambling in­dustry is con­stantly in a state of change. Check out this Ex­pert Guide to see the gambling leg­al land­scape and who to con­tact for any gambling reg­u­lat­ory con­cerns.Find out more gambling...

We last up­dated this guide in April 2020 in re­sponse to the out­break of COV­ID-19 – to in­clude spe­cif­ic guid­ance for dir­ect­ors on their re­spons­ib­il­it­ies in light of the pan­dem­ic, and to provide a sum­mary...

In­tro­duc­tion The COV­ID-19 crisis is an ex­treme ex­ample of the many un­ex­pec­ted in­cid­ents that im­pact con­struc­tion pro­jects, res­ult­ing in heightened ten­sions and dis­putes amongst stake­hold­ers. The pan­dem­ic has ac­cen­tu­ated many of the typ­ic­al fric­tions that oc­cur in the con­struc­tion in­dustry, as well as high­light new chal­lenges. No mat­ter how ex­per­i­enced or as­tute the parties to a pro­ject are, when ne­go­ti­at­ing and con­clud­ing con­tracts, there is al­ways the po­ten­tial for an un­fore­seen event to cause ma­jor dis­rup­tion, res­ult­ing in com­mer­cial pres­sures and fin­an­cial losses.Re­ad­just­ing Risks, the latest CMS In­ter­na­tion­al Con­struc­tion Sur­vey for 2021, is avail­able to down­load now. This year's re­port ex­amined more than 50 re­sponses from seni­or mem­bers of the in­dustry and con­duc­ted in­ter­views with lead­ing fig­ures that have key re­spons­ib­il­it­ies for con­struc­tion con­tracts, pro­jects and the res­ol­u­tion of dis­putes. The sur­vey drew in re­sponses from across the world, es­pe­cially Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Lat­in Amer­ica.    The re­port show­cases the primary trends in the mar­ket, from the in­creas­ing en­thu­si­asm for ar­bit­ra­tion as a pre­ferred form of dis­pute res­ol­u­tion, along with mount­ing pref­er­ences for me­di­ation and oth­er forms of al­tern­at­ive dis­pute res­ol­u­tion (ADR), to in­dustry-wide re­cog­ni­tion that keep­ing bet­ter re­cords and man­aging change more ef­fect­ively are vi­tal to min­im­ising ten­sions and po­ten­tial dis­putes. It also re­views the ad­di­tion­al strain of COV­ID-19 on the in­dustry.

Frank­furt/Main – Mowi ASA, a world-lead­ing Nor­we­gi­an food com­pany in the sea­food sec­tor, re­fin­anced its ex­ist­ing bank fa­cil­ity with a EUR 1.8 bil­lion five-year se­cured re­volving cred­it fa­cil­ity. The...

When tal­ent needs to move, we’re be­hind youLiv­ing in a highly con­nec­ted world al­lows com­pan­ies to hire and mo­bil­ise skilled and tal­en­ted people al­most any­where – and loc­ate busi­ness op­er­a­tions wherever they need to be.But when con­sid­er­ing mov­ing of­fices or em­ploy­ees, there are a range of factors to con­sider. These can in­clude the polit­ic­al and eco­nom­ic con­sequences of COV­ID-19 or Brexit, the cor­por­ate and per­son­al tax im­plic­a­tions of re­lo­ca­tion – even the im­pact of sanc­tions im­posed on cer­tain coun­tries.Around the world our CMS Ex­pat Desk teams are ready to help you man­age the em­ploy­ment, tax, visa (im­mig­ra­tion) and so­cial se­cur­ity as­pects of re­lo­ca­tion.Draw­ing to­geth­er spe­cial­ists from the CMS Em­ploy­ment & Pen­sions Group and the CMS Tax Group, our teams are net­worked across loc­a­tions in Europe, Asia, Africa and Lat­in Amer­ica to of­fer you multi-jur­is­dic­tion­al sup­port – wheth­er you’re mov­ing one em­ploy­ee or a whole of­fice.Our em­phas­is is on un­der­stand­ing you and the spe­cif­ic needs of your busi­ness. By shar­ing our know­ledge, net­works and provid­ing prac­tic­al day-to-day sup­port, we aim to help make any re­lo­ca­tion pro­cess smooth, swift and fully-con­sidered – with min­im­al dis­rup­tion to your core busi­ness.Ex­plore more about our ex­per­i­ence and ser­vices be­low. To con­tact your loc­al CMS Ex­pat Desk team, please check out the group con­tact card.Ayşegül Avci and Niels Koene, Co-Heads of the CMS Ex­pat Desk

The con­struc­tion sec­tor has a repu­ta­tion for be­ing tense and frac­tious, giv­en the tight fin­an­cial mar­gins that many parties op­er­ate un­der, coupled with the many events that can­not be an­ti­cip­ated. The COV­ID-19 crisis is one such ex­ample, and it has fur­ther high­lighted the need to pre­pare for and con­stantly ad­dress risk, to deal with ten­sions and dis­putes promptly, and to se­lect the most ap­pro­pri­ate pro­cesses for this to hap­pen.The pan­dem­ic, though, has also shown the in­dustry’s will­ing­ness to be prag­mat­ic and con­sid­er­ate to the ex­cep­tion­al pres­sures that pro­ject coun­ter­parties and oth­er stake­hold­ers have faced. With so­ci­ety in gen­er­al de­vel­op­ing a great­er alert­ness and com­pas­sion to­wards those es­pe­cially af­fected by the COV­ID-19 out­break, these sen­ti­ments are also evid­ent in the con­struc­tion in­dustry. A spir­it of com­mer­cial­ism and prag­mat­ism has filtered in­to the sec­tor, al­though this does not mean that con­struc­tion play­ers are simply will­ing to stand back and not as­sert their rights un­der ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al ar­range­ments. Time will also tell wheth­er this prag­mat­ism is here to last or wheth­er the is­sues that the parties are deal­ing with com­mer­cially now will be the ar­bit­ra­tions of the fu­ture. Nearly all those sur­veyed and in­ter­viewed said the in­dustry could still do more to man­age risks, not­ably by keep­ing bet­ter re­cords, by man­aging change more ef­fect­ively and by sub­mit­ting no­tices with­in pre­scribed time lim­its, among oth­er factors. At the same time, the mech­an­isms for resolv­ing dis­putes are con­stantly evolving. Our re­port shows that me­di­ation and oth­er forms of ADR have a real place in the mar­ket, and that ar­bit­ra­tion is still gain­ing pop­ular­ity thanks to ef­forts to ex­ped­ite ar­bit­ral pro­ceed­ings and make them less ex­pens­ive. Like the rest of the eco­nomy where COV­ID-19 has su­per­charged cer­tain in­dus­tries and trans­formed work­ing prac­tices, it has ac­cel­er­ated change with­in the con­struc­tion in­dustry. The sec­tor is cer­tainly suf­fer­ing from the pan­dem­ic, but it is re­spond­ing pos­it­ively.

Head of Leg­al and Con­tracts at Sam­sung C&T Cor­por­a­tion, Asia Pa­cific Re­gion­al Of­fice

When it be­comes clear that an early-stage res­ol­u­tion of a dis­pute is no longer feas­ible and cases need to be ad­dressed through form­al chan­nels, a size­able ma­jor­ity of our sur­vey re­spond­ents single out ar­bit­ra­tion as the most ap­pro­pri­ate form of dis­pute res­ol­u­tion. While our re­search shows that me­di­ation can also be ef­fect­ive when parties want to reach a ‘com­mer­cial’ or prag­mat­ic solu­tion, ar­bit­ra­tion re­mains the most ef­fect­ive meth­od when un­der­tak­ing more form­al pro­ceed­ings. Al­though ar­bit­ra­tion has suffered from a per­cep­tion that it is a long and ex­pens­ive pro­cess, the main ar­bit­ra­tion in­sti­tu­tions have worked hard in re­cent years to make it more at­tract­ive to end users. These in­sti­tu­tions are be­com­ing more in­nov­at­ive, of­fer­ing ex­ped­ited pro­ceed­ings, the avail­ab­il­ity of emer­gency ar­bit­rat­ors, and the abil­ity to se­cure ar­bit­ral awards even faster. Mar­ket data sup­ports this, with The Singa­pore In­ter­na­tion­al Ar­bit­ra­tion Centre (SI­AC) re­port­ing a re­cord 1,080 new case fil­ings in 2020, more than double the fig­ure for 2019.Ad­ri­an Bell, Co-head of the In­fra­struc­ture, Con­struc­tion and En­ergy (ICE) Dis­putes Group, be­lieves that it is not just SI­AC that is mak­ing ar­bit­ra­tion even more ap­peal­ing: