Thursday 19 May 2022
9:30am UK | 10:30am France | 12:30pm UAE | 4:30pm Singapore
COVID-19 saw businesses move from a state of uncertainty to a state of acceptance as markets and economies started to stabilise as lockdown restrictions eased. As the "new normal" evolves, Stephenson Harwood's specialists consider heightened risk areas that surfaced during the pandemic, and which may affect M&A going forward.
In particular, they will consider the importance of:
(i) ensuring any employment actions taken by a prospective target in the last year (e.g. redundancies, salary reductions, furlough and flexible working measures, etc.) were made in compliance with applicable laws;
(ii) scrutinising a target's IT systems, cybersecurity controls and overarching data governance framework given the surge of such risks during lockdown;
(iii) ensuring the target's open-source software uses adhere to relevant licensing requirements, as well as,
(iv) whether companies have complied with relevant competition rules despite a relaxation of such rules during the pandemic, and now the revival of dawn raids by antitrust authorities.
Speakers: Ben Mercer, Paul Reeves, Katie Hewson, Simon Bollans, Jean-Julien Lemonnier and Bryony Roy.