Understanding the merger guidelines released by the DOJ and FTC is crucial for businesses navigating the complex landscape of antitrust regulations. Here's a quick overview of the guidelines. Learn more at our webcast: Antitrust Merger Enforcement: What to Expect in 2024? Upcoming Webcasts Upcoming Webcasts back
On December 18, 2023, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission jointly released the finalized merger guidelines that serve as the basis for agencies to determine whether mergers violate antitrust laws. Back in July 2023, the DOJ and FTC, collectively referred to as the Agencies, released draft guidelines. They received 30,000 comments from the public, which were incorporated into the draft, creating slight modifications to the draft before releasing the finalized version. Take a closer look at the finalized merger guidelines in this article. Guideline 1: Mergers Raise a Presumption of Illegality When [...]
With new trends and technological advancements, the food and beverage (F&B) sector continues to evolve at a rapid pace. And to keep up with this ever-evolving industry, many food and beverage professionals are searching for new ways to stay ahead of the curve. One of them is by leveraging an ERP solution. ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, refers to a software system that helps F&B companies manage and streamline their business processes—from finance, accounting, sales, and customer service. In the past, ERP systems were mainly used by large companies as a tool to help manage [...]
In September 2021, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia issued a new comprehensive data protection law called Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL). Under this new law, companies in Saudi Arabia cannot transfer personal data outside the Kingdom without first acquiring an individual exemption. Saudi Arabian companies that don't comply with the PDPL will be subject to criminal sanctions. However, lobbying firms in the United States now warn that enforcing the PDPL could have serious economic consequences for Saudi Arabia. “There are several aspects of this law that pose not only significant problems for the private sector but [...]
Vendor Insight - a Vendor Risk Management (VRM) solution offered by Mitratech - was recently named as a top performer and technology leader in the 2021 SPARK Matrix Report, cementing Miratech's position as a worldwide leader in risk management. Mitratech is a technology provider that offers solutions for corporate legal professionals, risk and compliance professionals, and HR professionals that are designed to help them boost productivity and mitigate risk through improved operational alignment and increased visibility throughout their organization. Mitratech was founded in 1987 and today serves 1,800 organizations across 160 different countries. In an analysis [...]
Most business organizations across different industries remain reliant on outsourcing to gain a competitive edge—a trend that also reveals the growing third-party security risks. When businesses contract with third parties, they open a critical aspect of their operations to vendor-related risks and threats. Poor vendor management program should be considered as a major threat by business leaders today. Companies failing to assess vendors thoroughly suffer significant financial, compliance, operational, and reputational damages. As the threat of cybercriminals and attackers continues to magnify, new waves of attacks are anticipated to emerge—further highlighting the urgent need for [...]
Last November, JPMorgan filed a lawsuit against Tesla claiming that the auto manufacturer failed to meet the contractual obligations it made with JPMorgan. This lawsuit stems from an agreement that would allow JP Morgan to purchase shares of Tesla if the "strike" price of those shares fell below Tesla's share price when the warrants that the bank purchased from Tesla expired in June and July 2021. After Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2018 that he had secured funding to take the company private at $420 per share, JPMorgan adjusted this strike price - something they [...]
According to a report from The Guardian, the newly-rebranded Meta (formerly Facebook) is now facing a $3.2 billion class-action lawsuit that was recently filed in the UK. The lawsuit was filed by Dr. Liza Lovdahl Gormsen of the law firm Innsworth and alleges that Meta is responsible for unfairly exploiting the data of 44 million UK Facebook users. In a statement provided to The Guardian, Dr. Lovdahl Gormsen says, "They are exploiting users by taking their personal data without properly compensating them for taking that data,” Lovdahl Gormsen said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “I don’t think the users are [...]
Laws and regulations guiding how companies are allowed to collect personal information from their customers have become increasingly strict over the past few years. However, laws regarding the collection of personal data from children under the age of 13 are even more stringent. Now, advertising platform OpenX is being forced to pay a $2 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after being accused of collecting personal information from children under 13 without first acquiring parental consent. The FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) requires that any apps, websites, or online services that are directed [...]
Last August, China's National People's Congress passed a new law designed to protect the online privacy of Chinese citizens titled the "Personal Information Protection Law". The new law - which went into effect on November 1, 2021 - requires that any website or application that collects personal data from its users must have a clear and reasonable purpose for doing so and that their usage of that personal data must be limited to the minimum scope necessary to achieve this clear and reasonable purpose. In addition to requiring that companies only utilize the personal data of [...]
On Monday, November 15, Dutch cooperative Rabobank announced that it had been ordered by the Dutch central bank to fix its customer due diligence practices under threat of a "punitive enforcement procedure". Rabobank went on to explain in the statement that the current scrutiny the bank is facing stems from Rabobank's lack of compliance with Dutch anti-money-laundering laws. Rabobank said in the company's statement that, "These deficiencies mainly concern the execution, recording and outsourcing of client due diligence, transaction monitoring and reporting of unusual transactions." As of right now, Rabobank claims to be unaware as to whether prosecutors are investigating the situation [...]
Ever since the app was launched in 2016, TikTok has been a source of numerous controversies. The latest controversy to strike TikTok, though, is perhaps the most substantial. According to court documents, a proposed $92 million settlement is now pending in the TikTok, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation. The lawsuit against TikTok, Inc. alleges that the company has violated state and federal law by improperly collecting and using the personal data of the app's users. While TikTok, Inc. has denied these allegations, the company announced on November 15 that a settlement has been reached and has directed its [...]
Telemedicine is something that offers a wide range of considerable benefits and is a healthcare service that has been growing in popularity for some time now. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has vastly accelerated the prominence of telemedicine services over the past couple of years and has driven innovations that now position telemedicine for even more accelerated growth. Since the start of the pandemic, limiting the spread of COVID-19 due to hospital and clinic visits has been a vital yet difficult goal for healthcare professionals. Reducing the number of in-person encounters between patients and providers became important [...]
Disaster strikes unexpectedly in all organizations. But all too often, they are caught unawares. Worst, unprepared! When this happens, the process of strategic decision-making bears the brunt of passive ownership and inadequate responsibility and accountability. That is why increasing demand for a sound information governance (IG) program is in place. Information governance rules out complacency- right to the core. As it has evolved to be more policy-driven, it helps to define clearly who, what, when, where, why, and how your company’s information is accessed and utilized. While an improved data retention process aims to reduce [...]
As part of the company's ongoing efforts to combat the rise in cybercrime, Google Cloud has recently invested $50 million in cybersecurity startup Cybereason. This investment comes on the heels of an announced partnership between Google Cloud and Cybereason that entails the companies working together to launch a platform called Cybereason XDR. Cybereason XDR is a platform that is powered by Chronicle and designed to scan more than 23 trillion security-related events per week in order to identify potential threats and predict cyberattacks. The hope is that this new platform will improve security across the entire Google Cloud infrastructure. [...]
