Polish Data Protection Authority To Get New Power To Impose Fines Starting In 2011

From 2011, the General Inspector for Personal Data Protection (GIODO) will be able to impose fines for non-compliance with its decisions…

ANALYSIS: Canada’s New Anti-Spam Law

The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act (FISA), Bill C-28, was passed by the Federal Parliament and received Royal Assent on December 15, 2010. The provisions of FISA will not come into force until proclaimed.
FISA was originally introduced into Parliament in April 2009 as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, but lapsed when Parliament was prorogued in December of 2009…

ANALYSIS: Implications For Non-U.S. Investment Advisers Of Dodd-Frank Act Provisions And Proposed SEC Rules On Registration Of Private Fund Investment Advisers

The Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act (the “Private Fund Legislation”) adopted as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”) amended various provisions of the U.S. Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the “Advisers Act”) to impose Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) registration obligations on investment advisers to hedge funds, private equity funds and other private pools of capital…

ANALYSIS: The New E.U. Directive On Alternative Investment Fund Managers

On November 11, 2010, the European Parliament (the “Parliament”) voted to adopt the E.U. Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers (the “Directive”). 1 The Directive has been the subject of intense industry and media scrutiny since the original draft was published by the European Commission (the “Commission”) on April 30, 2009 (the “Original Draft”)…

ANALYSIS: New Whistleblowing Rules in Hungary

On April 1, the Act for the Protection of Fair Process entered into force in Hungary (the “Fair Process Act”). It addresses special protections for whistle-blowers, as well as more general data protection issues in employment relationships. The Fair Process Act significantly changes existing privacy practice by removing certain aspects of the requirements for employee consent to the processing of personal data for the purposes of whistle-blowing hotlines.

The Fair Process Act makes Hungary one of the few countries in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) to pass legislation expressly authorizing the processing of personal data for whistle-blowing procedures. While whistle-blowing hotlines are rarely used in other…

BNA INTERVIEW: Timothy Pilgrim, Privacy Commissioner of Australia

BNA:
What led to the integration of the Office of the Australian Privacy Commissioner into the new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner?
Pilgrim:
The [ruling Labor national] government, when it came into power in 2007, came in on a new agenda for more open and transparent government.

And that agenda was based around amending the Freedom of Information Act 1982 in particular, and also instilling a new culture of openness and…

Under Basel III Package, Higher Levels of Common Equity Asked of Major International Banks by 2019

GENEVA—Major international banks will have to raise some $220 billion in additional common equity in order to meet new requirements set out under the Basel III package of capital reforms due to enter into force in 2015, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said Dec. 16.

In its Quantitative Impact Study, the Basel Committee said the cost of implementation would rise to $769 billion in additional capital if the minimum common equity ratio plus capital conservation buffer…

ANALYSIS: Private Equity and Hedge Fund Licenses in Japan: Understanding the Investment Side

This article continues the discussion of private equity and hedge fund licensing in article #3 of this series 1 on the investment side, as licensing for so-called “inbound” investments was deferred in that discussion. In last month’s article, 2 we noted how investment advisory and discretionary investment manager registrations are used in the real estate context as precursor to a more general…

Brazil, India and Nine Emerging Nations Sign Trade Accord Lowering Tariffs by 20 Percent

RIO DE JANEIRO—In what Brazilian diplomats hailed as a new form of conducting global trade talks, 11 emerging nations, led by Brazil and India, Dec. 15 signed a trade accord lowering tariffs by 20 percent on 70 percent of the goods traded between them.

Negotiations were conducted within the Global System of Trade Preferences Among Developing Nations in order to guarantee that the participating countries would not be required to extend the same…

European Commission Proposes to Strengthen Measures to Prevent Chemical Accidents

BRUSSELS—Legislation designed to prevent and mitigate chemical accidents in the European Union should be updated and made more stringent, the European Commission said Dec. 21.
In particular, operators of chemical plants should be required to distribute more detailed information to people living around installations and the public should have more opportunity to take part in…

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