Archive: February 2020

LIBOR is commonly used in project finance transactions as the basis for the calculation of a floating interest rate for sterling and US dollar loans. It is very likely that LIBOR will cease to be published after 2021.

The Mining, Agriculture and Construction (MAC) Protocol (the so-called Pretoria Protocol) developed by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) is an international treaty that facilitates the financing of mining, agricultural and construction equipment.

Companies globally are being impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, through both the labor market and their supply chain.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (the Commission), the Nigerian competition authority, has taken a number of measures to implement the Nigerian merger control regime. In particular, in late 2019, the Commission adopted thresholds as well as taking the relatively unusual step of implementing an expedited and simplified procedure for foreign-to-foreign mergers.

As part of a package of reforms, the supremacy of the COMESA merger control regime has finally been recognised in Kenya with the effect that COMESA mergers no longer need to be notified to the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK).

An important decision from 2019 and one that will be of keen interest to UK companies with international operations is the UK Supreme Court judgment in Vedanta Resources Plc and Konkola Copper Mines Plc v Lungowe and Others [2019] UKSC 20.

Norton Rose Fulbright advised the Equator Principles Association (EPA) as counsel for the legal review of the fourth Equator Principles (EP4).

A fortnight ago, the English Commercial Court handed down judgment in TAQA Bratani Ltd v RockRose UKCS8 LLC [2020] EWHC 58

The engineering and construction contracts published by FIDIC, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, continue to serve as the pre-eminent standard form agreements used on international projects.