The UK introduced restrictions on the provision of legal services to Russia in June 2023 (as summarised in our previous post). Since then, the legal industry has raised a number of concerns about the drafting of the relevant legislation, culminating in the issuance of a new general licence (the "GL") which seeks to address some of the most significant unintended consequences arising from the new restrictions. In this post, we review the provisions of the GL and the remaining issues with these restrictions, as well as providing a round-up of key recent Russia sanctions developments in the UK and EU. Read more

The UK's long-awaited sanctions restricting the provision of legal services to Russia were announced on 29 June. The announcement gives a somewhat misleading impression of the law, and we summarise the new restrictions in this post. The new measures are introduced by the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2023 (the "Amending Regulations"), which amend the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (the "Russia Regulations"). Read more

Originally expected by March 2021, the UK and EU have, more than two years later, finally signed a memorandum of understanding (the “MoU”), which sets up a framework for increased cooperation on financial services regulation. The MoU, first published in draft form on 19 May 2023 and signed on 27 June 2023, does not agree … Read more

Following its announcement of an 11^th package of Russia sanctions in May (which we covered here), the European Union has now adopted the package. Key elements of the 11^th sanctions package include fresh targeted sanctions against individuals and entities, an enlargement of restrictions on the sale, export and transit of certain goods and technology, as well as additional measures to prevent sanctions circumvention.  We summarise the key elements in this post, along with a round-up of other recent sanctions developments from the UK. Read more

In this post, we summarise recent UK and EU developments regarding sanctions. Read more

Much has been written about the Retained EU law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (the 'Bill'), which is currently going through Parliament. This Bill is the latest in the line of legal developments since a majority of the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. Approaching seven years later, what is clear is how difficult the process of unwinding our body of law from that of the EU has been. In this post we aim to keep things simple and focus on some key issues, Read more

This article was first published in The Banker on 3 March 2023. Final decision yet to be made The world of money is changing. The received wisdom of “cash is king” has long been declining and the world is gradually moving to a more digitised banking space where digital deposits and payments have become dominant; … Read more

In this blog post, we round-up key forthcoming developments in the UK and at EU and International levels in financial services regulation which are expected to happen in March and April 2023. Read more