Infrastructure & Projects

1st edi­tion 2020All EU Mem­ber States have been re­quired to ap­ply the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion ("GDPR", Reg­u­la­tion (EU) 2016/679) since 25 May 2018. After a cau­tious ini­tial peri­od, the EU data pro­tec­tion au­thor­it­ies ("DPA") have in­creased their fin­ing activ­ity sig­ni­fic­antly. This GDPR En­force­ment Track­er Re­port aims to provide you with valu­able in­sights in­to the fin­ing activ­it­ies of all EU DPAs un­der the GDPR, as well as the ICO's prac­tice in the United King­dom. Our ana­lys­is is based on the pub­licly avail­able data on fines that we col­lect and com­pile at www.en­force­ment­track­er.com. We in­tend to pub­lish an­nu­al edi­tions of this re­port, and we ex­pect that the rel­ev­ance of in­sights will stead­ily in­crease as more data on fines be­comes avail­able.Over­view, coun­try and sec­tor ap­proachIn search of guid­ance on how to op­tim­ise its own data pro­tec­tion strategy and pri­or­it­ise data pro­tec­tion meas­ures, a com­pany will nat­ur­ally want to look at its peers and the com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies' prac­tice. This holds true both in terms of busi­ness sec­tors and jur­is­dic­tion. Kick­ing off with an over­all sum­mary on the ex­ist­ing fines ("Num­bers and Fig­ures"), we have cor­res­pond­ingly di­vided the fines in­to the fol­low­ing busi­ness sec­tors and con­sidered the re­spect­ive fines' ori­gins:Fin­ance, in­sur­ance and con­sultingAc­com­mod­a­tion and hos­pit­al­ity­Health careIn­dustry, com­merce and real es­tate­Media, tele­coms and broad­cast­ing­Pub­lic sec­tor­Trans­port­a­tion and en­ergy­In­di­vidu­als and private as­so­ci­ation­sEm­ploy­er­sY­our takeawaysThe in-depth ana­lys­is per­mits first con­clu­sions to be drawn as to which busi­ness sec­tors at­trac­ted par­tic­u­larly hefty fines. We have also ana­lysed the DPAs' reas­on­ings for the fines. These as­pects to­geth­er al­low us to provide you with key takeaways for each busi­ness sec­tor. Apart from the law­ful­ness of each data pro­cessing op­er­a­tion, bol­ster­ing data se­cur­ity should re­main in the spot­light for every or­gan­isa­tion. Lit­ig­a­tion in data pro­tec­tion is set to in­crease in the near fu­ture. Or­gan­isa­tions that main­tain up-to-date se­cur­ity meas­ures will be best pre­pared for the fu­ture and for po­ten­tial lit­ig­a­tion.

China’s Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive (BRI) con­tin­ues to evolve, of­fer­ing new op­por­tun­it­ies for na­tions, com­munit­ies and busi­nessesIt is now ex­pli­citly aligned with many areas that are in­creas­ing pri­or­it­ies for in­ter­na­tion­al busi­nesses, such as ESG prin­ciples and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. But in 2020 it faces un­pre­ced­en­ted head­winds, in­clud­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic and trade dis­putes.As a lead­er in many Belt and Road sec­tors, CMS has polled and in­ter­viewed over 500 BRI par­ti­cipants around the world, about their cur­rent think­ing on BRI and the pro­spects they see for it.This ma­ter­i­al is the found­a­tion of our new re­ports on BRI, cov­er­ing top­ics such as:The im­pact of Cov­id-19 on BRID­if­fer­ent views of BRI among Chinese and in­ter­na­tion­al par­ti­cipant­s­Joint ven­tures and part­ner­shipsProb­lems ex­per­i­enced in BRI pro­ject­s­Key risks and risk mit­ig­a­tion­BRI dis­pute res­ol­u­tion and ar­bit­ra­tionESG, sus­tain­ab­il­ity and BRI­Belt and Road 2.0The Di­git­al Silk Road  and the Health Silk RoadThe pro­spects for BRI after 2020Our find­ings from China are avail­able now and Asia-Pa­cific will fol­low soon. Re­ports on Cent­ral and East­ern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Lat­in Amer­ica will be pub­lished in the com­ing months.me­di­um me­di­um me­di­um me­di­um me­di­um me­di­um 

The Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive (BRI) con­tin­ues to evolve. Its par­ti­cipants are in­creas­ingly look­ing to meet the trends of the fu­ture. Af­ford­able pro­jects, em­bra­cing mod­ern tech­no­lo­gies and meth­ods, as well the “open, green and clean” ap­proach of BRI 2.0, will of­ten be those that stand the greatest chance of suc­cess – a point un­der­lined by China’s re­cently an­nounced tar­get for car­bon neut­ral­ity and Pres­id­ent Xi Jin­ping’s call for a green re­cov­ery of the world eco­nomy.But how are the un­pre­ced­en­ted dif­fi­culties of 2020, in­clud­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic and trade dis­putes, af­fect­ing the pro­spects of BRI?Wel­come to the first of a series of re­ports that as­sess the chal­lenges for BRI and the steps that BRI par­ti­cipants can take to achieve both suc­cess for them­selves and a pos­it­ive fu­ture for BRI. This re­port is in­ten­ded primar­ily for a Chinese read­er­ship and is there­fore avail­able in both Eng­lish and Chinese.The re­port ex­am­ines:Why Chinese par­ti­cipants in BRI are more gen­er­ally pos­it­ive about it than non-Chinese par­ti­cipants, and how this may be re­solved.The ef­fects of Cov­id-19 on BRI, and new en­thu­si­asm for the Health Silk Road.How to mit­ig­ate BRI risk and man­age dis­putes.Po­ten­tial trends in the fin­an­cing of BRI pro­jects.The im­pact of BRI 2.0.

We are liv­ing in tur­bu­lent times, char­ac­ter­ised by polit­ic­al, cli­mate and health crises. The most acute of these – the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic – has clearly shown how in­ter­con­nec­ted our eco­nom­ies are: travel, com­merce and sup­ply chains world­wide have been im­pacted. No in­di­vidu­al or busi­ness has re­mained totally un­af­fected by it.As a glob­al or­gan­isa­tion, with a pres­ence in key busi­ness hubs around the world, we are wit­ness­ing the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic firsthand. Our teams in Asia, Europe, Africa and Lat­in Amer­ica are help­ing cli­ents deal with this un­pre­ced­en­ted situ­ation. Un­fold­ing in dif­fer­ent in­tens­it­ies in dif­fer­ent parts of the world at dif­fer­ent times, our teams are in the for­tu­nate po­s­i­tion of be­ing able to con­nect with and learn from each oth­er. This en­ables us to sup­port our cli­ents in a mean­ing­ful way, listen­ing to and un­der­stand­ing their con­cerns and provid­ing them with busi­ness-rel­ev­ant ad­vice that draws on in­sights from our ex­perts world­wide.In this crisis, we, as a so­ci­ety, are at a cross­roads. What is cer­tain is that for in­di­vidu­als and busi­nesses (ours in­cluded) there will be no ‘back to busi­ness as usu­al’. Things need to (and will) change. How we shape the ‘new nor­mal’ is up to us. In this An­nu­al Re­view, we look at some key de­vel­op­ments that are in­creas­ingly im­pact­ing busi­ness suc­cess. Com­pan­ies need to take these in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when ad­apt­ing their op­er­a­tions to the new busi­ness en­vir­on­ment.The months ahead will be chal­len­ging for us all. Busi­nesses will need to think stra­tegic­ally and po­s­i­tion them­selves for suc­cess in the new nor­mal. We at CMS see it as our task to guide our cli­ents through this chan­ging busi­ness land­scape.Mat­thi­as Licht­blau (Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or) Pierre-Sé­bas­tien Thill (Chair­man) Duncan We­st­on (Ex­ec­ut­ive Part­ner) CMS Ex­ec­ut­ive Team

When we first draf­ted this fore­word, it said that al­though our fo­cus in this re­port is on per­son­al de­vel­op­ment for GCs, the world in which a GC works does make a dif­fer­ence to their role. Re­cent events have con­firmed that in a way we could nev­er have ima­gined.As we sur­veyed and in­ter­viewed GCs across Lat­in Amer­ica, no-one had heard of Cov­id-19. But now we are pub­lish­ing this re­port in what seems like a dif­fer­ent world from the one where we gathered our data.Clearly, we have to ask: is it still rel­ev­ant? The coronavir­us has brought not only count­less hu­man tra­gedies but also world­wide so­cial, fin­an­cial and com­mer­cial dis­rup­tion. Are our find­ings about the in-house pro­fes­sion still val­id in such a chal­len­ging and chan­ging en­vir­on­ment?We be­lieve they are. Our firm began its pro­gramme of GC re­ports dur­ing the glob­al fin­an­cial crisis. Such crises ac­cel­er­ate and change the way we view things. The glob­al fin­an­cial crisis boos­ted the status and value of many GCs, help­ing them achieve the am­bi­tions we dis­cussed. By help­ing their busi­nesses nav­ig­ate troubled times, with new re­quire­ments in areas such as com­pli­ance, they be­came more in­flu­en­tial.In the present crisis we will see oth­er GCs ex­per­i­ence a sim­il­ar change, as their com­pan­ies fo­cus on sur­viv­al, risk and sus­tain­ab­il­ity in the ‘new nor­mal’. Our re­search shows that Lat­in Amer­ic­an GCs are ready to seize such op­por­tun­it­ies, to prove their worth and to grow and de­vel­op their roles.In some re­spects, this re­port of­fers a snap­shot of life be­fore Cov­id-19. But in oth­er ways it’s a vis­ion for the fu­ture. The dir­ec­tion of travel for GCs – to­wards be­com­ing genu­inely stra­tegic busi­ness coun­sel – re­mains the same, even if some de­tails change. If the crisis ac­cel­er­ates pre-ex­ist­ing trends, they will be trends that GCs had already re­cog­nised.We be­lieve this is the first study of its kind in Lat­in Amer­ica.We hope that you will find it use­ful and thought­pro­vok­ing, even – or per­haps even more – in these dif­fi­cult times.We would also like to thank the many con­trib­ut­ors across CMS for their sup­port with pre­par­ing this re­port. It is not pos­sible to men­tion all of those who have made sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions by name.However, we would like to give par­tic­u­lar thanks to Adam Beach, Madalena Hou­li­han, Jonath­an Fenton, Cath­er­ine Mc­Gregor and Mary Hoover, for their con­sid­er­able ef­forts in as­sist­ing us.

The first CMS Gen­er­al Coun­sel re­port in the Lat­in Amer­ica re­gion ex­plores the de­vel­op­ment of the GC role and how the world in which GCs work im­pacts them