In a series of recent statements, the UK Financial Conduct Authority  (FCA) has set out how it expects the insurance industry to help consumers and businesses affected by the coronavirus.

The FCA would like to see a degree of consistency across the industry in how business interruption claims are handled. To help to achieve such consistency, the FCA is planning to ask the English court to make declarations about the scope of various business interruption (BI) clauses.

Continue Reading FCA’s Statements about Insurance and the Coronavirus: Competition Considerations

In recent months we have seen a number of horizontal mergers being scrutinized under national and EU merger rules. Since the fall-out from the Siemens/Alstom merger refusal, we have also seen a number of ministers from member states, including Poland, France and Germany, call for increased tolerance and indeed support for the emergence of so-called ‘national champions’. Recently in March there have been calls for companies to ‘reshore’ operations which they had outsourced to other countries – including not only third countries but also other member states. Targets included Peugeot and Renault and there have been calls for the European Commission to provide support for such moves.

Continue Reading Horizontal Mergers in the EU