DLA Piper has launched the Global Merger Control Handbook, a comprehensive three-volume manual to help in-house counsel and other individuals involved in mergers and corporate reorganizations navigate the merger clearance process.
Click here to read more.
For our comprehensive round-up of February’s employment law developments, across all jurisdictions, click here.
You can also browse all our employment law updates, filterable by region, country and subject area, for free on GENIE, our global employment law resource.
Headline news
France: Gender pay gap decree published A decree confirming the methodology for gender pay gap reporting came into effect on 9 January 2019. The gender pay gap is measured using 5 different criteria (4 in companies with between 50 and 250 employees). Each indicator represents a number of points and companies obtaining less than 75 points out of 100 must take corrective measures or implement financial measures to adjust pay.
China: Important new rules on gender discrimination in force The Chinese Government issued a notice on 18 February 2019, which came into force with immediate effect, setting out important new rules on gender discrimination and the protection of women in the workplace.
Brazil: New President closes the Ministry of Labor On his first day in office on 1 January 2019, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, issued a provisional measure announcing, among other things, the closure of the Ministry of Labor.
Belgium: Increased dismissal costs as sectors fail to implement employability measures Payment of special social contributions is required on a portion of notice pay with effect from 1 January 2019 in the absence of sector-level employability measures having been implemented.
Italy: Finance Bill 2019: Labour measures in force from 1 January 2019 The Finance Bill introduces various measures which impact on employers including increased penalties aimed at preventing undeclared work and incentives for hiring young employees with higher qualifications.
Germany: Law on right to work part-time and return to work full time in force Under the new law in force from 1 January 2019, employees have the right to work part-time for between 1 and 5 years and return to full-time after the part-time period has expired.
Registration is now open for our Israel Real Estate Summit. We will be joined by major Israeli institutions active in the global real estate markets, leading real estate professionals from around the world and DLA Piper partners from the profiled regions. Register here: http://dlapi.pr/DxweGQ
Written by Catherine McGregor for DLA Piper WIN
Does your legal department need a ‘why’; a purpose or a sense of inspiration? In this article for DLA Piper’s WIN program, we apply Simon Sinek’s seminal text to the life of the general counsel.
Click here to read more.
January 1, 2019 marked significant changes to California legislation.
Among noteworthy changes are new sexual harassment training requirements, rules addressing the number of females serving on public company boards, and legislation concerning confidential settlement agreements.
DLA Piper recently launched the 2019 refresh of the DLA Piper Data Protection Laws of the World Handbook. The latest updates to this popular resource shows very clearly that 2018 was a significant year for privacy and data protection laws and that this area will continue to be one of the most dynamic and fast developing areas of law over the course of the next year.
During 2018, we saw a number of significant privacy law developments worldwide: the GDPR took effect after a two-year implementation period; a number of jurisdictions updated or began the process of updating local data protection laws to align to the GDPR; the US and Brazil broke new ground with privacy laws in their respective jurisdictions; and India introduced sweeping new privacy legislation. Moreover, this trend is expected to continue in 2019.
While there are too many developments to cover comprehensively, we highlight some notable developments in this alert.
With New York seemingly poised to enact legislation legalizing recreational marijuana, New York employers will face a host of new compliance issues. Garrett Kennedy and Evan Parness share their insights with New York Law Journal.
Click here to read the full article.
With the help of our friends at Proseeder, we have collected data points on venture capital financings and M&A transactions from Q1 2016 to Q4 2018. The raw data was provided by Crunchbase but we have compiled the data in a way that will allow you to filter it based on the relevant time period, volume of transactions, transaction type, and in some cases industry vertical. Over time, we plan on providing you with even more ways to understand the market and spot evolving trends.
Patrick Van Eecke, Partner and Global Co-Chair of DLA Piper’s Data Protection, Privacy and Security practice discusses the results of a recent data breach survey with Eytan Halon of The Jerusalem Post.
“Companies who take that into account and create products and software with embedded privacy by design have a huge competitive advantage going to the markets, competing with companies that do not have the kind of regulatory background that exists in Israel,” said Van Eecke.
Click here to read the full article.
On 25 May 2018 new data breach notification laws came into force across Europe, fundamentally changing the risk profile for organizations suffering a personal data breach.
DLA Piper has compiled a report which takes a closer look at the number of data breaches notified to regulators since the GDPR came into force, how the number of notifications compares among EEA member states, as well as country rankings based on notifications per capita. The report also considers the first fines issued for the period from 25 May 2018 to International Data Protection Day on 28 January 2019.
In the 8 months since GDPR has applied, there have been approximately 59,000 personal data breaches notified to regulators. It is still early days for GDPR enforcement with only a handful of fines reported across the EU, with the recent €50 million fine imposed on Google being the largest.
It is clear from the data that many organizations have heeded the new breach notification rules and are well aware of the high sanctions possible for failing to notify. We anticipate that 2019 will see an increase in both the number and the size of fines.
Access DLA Piper’s GDPR Data Breach Survey Report.
For further information on data protection and cybersecurity and how we can help please visit www.dlapiper.com/cybersecurity
