As you will know, on 23 June the UK will vote whether it wants to remain part of the EU. Read more.

Summary and implications A sponsor or developer can invest a lot of time developing relationships, joint ventures and bidding consortia. After you form your consortia and submit a PQQ, what happens if your carefully selected partner goes bust? Must you lose your hard fought place in the procurement? Not necessarily so, after a notable ruling by the ECJ. Read more.

In this online publication, we explore the key developments and market trends.- including tax and buy-side regulation - across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America that will be of interest to and affect our asset management clients. Read more.

Duff & Phelps is pleased to announce that we have recently completed the sale of Calumet International Limited to Aurelius Group. Read more.

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published its fifth annual DB funding statement (8 pages) which, it says, should be read in conjunction with the DB Code of Practice, which TPR expects trustees to take into account in their valuations. It is aimed principally at those schemes undertaking valuations with effective dates between 22 September 2015 and 21 September 2016 (Tranche 11) but is also of interest to other schemes.

In this journal just over three years ago, this author was of the view that: “It is difficult to see member states agreeing to proposals from the European institutions for substantive rapprochement of their internal [insolvency] laws unless there were overwhelming economic benefits for them to do so.”

A recent conference chaired by Glen Flannery, a partner in our Restructuring & Insolvency Group, highlighted an abundance of developments in European restructuring and insolvency laws. These include a baby step towards harmonisation of European insolvency laws as part of the EU’s drive to achieve a capital markets union, an explosion of cases in the commodities sector, more English schemes for foreign companies, a rapid rise in insolvency litigation finance, new laws for dealing with insolvent enterprise groups, and fresh interest in developing a global insolvency convention.

Essential Pensions News covers the latest pensions developments each month in an “at a glance” format. Read more.

From June 1, 2016, certain UK financial institutions (defined below) and members of their global group will be restricted from entering into, or materially amending, ‘financial arrangements’ governed by the laws of a ‘third country’ (being a country that is not an EU Member State) unless their counterparties enable them to meet a new, UK-specific, “stay recognition requirement”. The finalised stay recognition requirement will be contained in a new ‘Stay in Resolution’ Part of the PRA Rulebook.

It was 1978, Demand for oil was high, supply appeared tight and governments were beginning to stockpile supplies in order to avoid a repeat of the supply crisis of 1973 when Saudi Arabia cut production to support oil price. That was the year that this (then) newly married, newly qualified US attorney-at-law relocated to England and took up her first oil industry employment. The oil price was around $14 per barrel.