“Commercial Awareness Is Global.”
By: Rechtsanwalt (Attorney) Carsten Lexa, LL.M. A group of 72 former Dresdner Kleinwort traders have sued the new owner of Dresdner Bank AG, Commerzbank AG, claiming it reneged around 34 million Euros of guaranteed bonus payments. The traders argued that their bonusses were guaranteed before Commerzbank Bank´s 5 billion Euros takeover of Dresdner Bank and should not be affected by
By: Ainsley Brown PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the administrator of the now defunct bank’s European arm is set to file a claim against the parent bank in US bankruptcy court. PwC has until September 22 – the deadline set by the court – to file its claim. The claim surrounds some $100 billion in pledges made by the parent bank before it
By: Rechtsanwalt (Attorney) Carsten Lexa, LL.M. I´m not sure whether the following are really “secrets”. Very likely they are not. But they are definitely not commonly known – even to US-Americans, who use, on average, about 8 credit cards per person. Especially the Germans always wonder about the problems the US-Americans have with credit cards and how it is possible
By: Ainsley Brown It has been reported in the Times that ¨up to 5, 000 British investors have an estimated £3 billion stashed away in secret accounts in Liechtenstein. It is a good thing then, well good from the perspective of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), that Liechtenstein and the UK Government have reached an agreement on the sharing of
By: Ainsley Brown There are no more countries left on the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Tax haven black list. Does this mean that the black list is no more? No, not exactly. The OECD has removed Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco from its black list of non-compliant tax havens. The three countries were the last remaining on the
By: Ainsley Brown The shareholders of Northern Rock, lead by hedge funds SRM Global and RAB Capital, have lost their judicial review appeal at the Court of Appeal this week. This ruling should end the saga of the shareholders´ attempting to use human rights law in order to gain – to their mind – just compensation from the nationalization of
By: Ainsley Brown UBS, the world´s largest wealth manager, has found itself embroiled in a diplomatic row between Washington and Bern. At issue is the interpretation of the current US-Swiss double taxation treaty and at stake is the newly inked, yet to be ratified, revised US-Swiss double taxation treaty. Does the future of the revised US-Swiss double taxation treaty depend
By: Ainsley Brown The world economic down turn has had many knock on effects, many of which unexpected. It seems that bad times has the uncanny effect of making the once unthinkable, unsayable and undoable all very much possible. The Swiss banking model can be best characterized with one word: Secrecy. This don’t ask don’t tell attitude is more than
By: Ainsley Brown McKenna v. Gammon Gold Inc. This is case that has the potential to redefine the very cozy relationship law firms have with their banker clients. No longer will bankers be given blanket coverage under conflict of interest rules to prevent law firms from being representatives in claims brought against them. The operative word here being potential, as
By: Ainsley Brown This is an update to Shareholders Fail in Human Rights Cases Against UK Government. The Northern Rock shareholder group, lead by the Hedge Funds SRM Global and RAB Capital, last week launched their appeal of the decision reach in the High Court about the UK government’s nationalization compensations scheme. The appeal comes in the form of judicial