Horizon Scanning

Navigating the increasing scrutiny of green claims

As regulators across the UK and Europe ramp up their scrutiny of green claims, businesses face increasing pressure to ensure their environmental messaging is transparent and compliant.

Join Slaughter and May partners, Tim Blanchard and Lisa Wright, as they explore the key points businesses need to be aware of when making green claims.

AI and competition law – what’s been happening?

How will competition authorities shape the future of AI for businesses and consumers?

Partner Jordan Ellison and Senior PSL Annalisa Tosdevin discuss the current focus of competition authorities on the AI sector, and what this could mean for businesses and consumers in practice. 

How does the purpose of your borrowing impact tax deductibility?

Join Tanja Velling, co-host of our Tax News podcast and Tax Partners, Dominic Robertson and Charles Osborne, as they discuss the unallowable purpose rule, one of the UK's restrictions on companies deducting interest when calculating profits subject to corporation tax.

This episode dives into:

• How this rule disallows interest deductions where a company’s borrowing is for a main tax avoidance purpose; and
• recent Court of Appeal decisions on what constitutes a main tax avoidance purpose and what this means for taxpayers, particularly in an M&A context.

Talking AI with the experts - Faculty AI explain compliance through a technical lens

In this podcast, Rob Sumroy and Natalie Donovan speak to leading AI experts Faculty AI. They discuss, with Rupert Edwards (Faculty’s Legal Director and GC) and Kat James (their Technical Director) what good AI regulation looks like, how they approach regulatory concerns like transparency and explainability from a technical perspective and what AI developments we can expect over the next 12 months. 

Shifting the Overton Window: Enhancing Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity: Part 2

Amy Merrill is the CEO of The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), an independent, non-profit governance body for the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), which aims to maximise its potential to finance climate solutions.

In the second part of our episode on the Voluntary Carbon Market, Amy, Samay and Aaron dive into the issue of carbon credit quality and ‘integrity’, with a focus on assessing and differentiating the quality of carbon credits, and how the ICVCM works with stakeholder groups and the demand-side standard setting bodies.

Shifting the Overton Window: Enhancing Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity: Part 1

Amy Merrill is the CEO of The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), an independent, non-profit governance body for the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), which aims to maximise its potential to finance climate solutions.

In the first part of this episode, Samay Shah, Infrastructure and Energy Partner, and Aaron Wu, Senior PSL in our Infrastructure and Energy Group, are joined by Amy to delve into the key drivers behind the growing interest in Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs), the opportunities they offer, and their convergence with compliance markets. They also cover ICVCM’s role in building consensus on global thresholds to enhance the integrity of VCMs.

A Labour Government – will it ‘Make Work Pay’?

The UK General Election on 4 July 2024 resulted in the first Labour Government in 14 years. This in turn heralds the biggest reform of employment law for a generation. Labour’s proposals in their ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ promise wide-ranging changes, including introducing day 1 employment rights, expanding pay gap reporting, repealing the last government’s anti-strike laws, and introducing rights for employees to disconnect and to work flexibly. These are fundamental changes which will require businesses to rethink many aspects of their employment practices.

In this podcast, Philippa O’Malley and Clare Fletcher from our Employment team discuss Labour’s proposals, and what steps employers can take to prepare for them.

ESG in the year of the election

Join partner Harry Hecht and our Head of Business and Human Rights Moira Thompson Oliver as they sit down with Michael Arnold, Partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, to discuss the politicisation of ESG against the backdrop of elections in the UK, US and Europe this year. 

They cover the big picture for ESG and how the regulatory agenda is evolving, dive into examples of ESG issues that are coming up in election cycles, and discuss what it means for companies navigating these challenges across their global markets. 

Other key impacts discussed in this podcast include: 

• The main factors driving the ‘ESG-backlash’ and how companies are responding on either side of the Atlantic
• How activism and novel litigation techniques might affect how companies view ESG
• The key sectors in the regulatory hotseat
• The continued and increasing focus on good governance