Columbia Law School
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EU
What Should We Do About ChatGPT?
Almost everyone seems to be talking about ChatGPT. This new AI-enabled chatbot, which can swiftly produce answers that feel as if a human wrote them, promises to revolutionize how we generate text. Although ChatGPT emerged just a few months ago, …
ISS Discusses Big EU Changes to Corporate Governance
The rationale behind a number of recent EU legislation changes focusing on corporate governance has been to prioritise a long-term focus on governance through various transparency measures as well as some concrete requirements for action, and on allowing shareholders and …
Do the Old Rules Apply to ESG Ratings and Benchmarks?
The steady growth of sustainable finance in recent years poses difficult questions on how regulators should approach it. In the European Union (EU), for example, there has been an explosion of new rules aimed at addressing a broad array of …
Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses ESG and Antitrust
Companies, banks, insurers and asset managers are increasingly working together within their industries on environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) initiatives to achieve shared goals on climate change, labor rights and other social issues. In the eyes of many, collective action …
Latham & Watkins Discusses 10 ESG Issues to Keep Top of Mind in 2023
Both anticipated and less expected changes occurred across the ESG landscape in 2022. Anticipated changes included regulatory developments across the globe, including in the US, the UK, and the EU. Less expected changes included global and regional political shifts, such …
Davis Polk Discusses Antitrust Law and ESG Initiatives
In the U.S., some members of Congress and state AGs have advocated for greater antitrust scrutiny of industry-wide ESG initiatives, while other state AGs have argued that such initiatives are procompetitive. In the EU and the U.K., competition authorities have …
Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses the Myth of Artificial Intelligence Errors
Machines are increasingly making important decisions that have traditionally been made by humans, such as who should get a job interview or who should receive a loan. For valid legal, reputational, and technical reasons, many organizations and regulators do not …
How Board Gender Quotas Affect Stock Prices
Women have traditionally suffered from discrimination in the labor market (Tatli et al., 2013) and are under-represented in upper management (Thams, Bendell and Terjesen, 2018). To address this widespread gender imbalance, many countries have implemented gender diversity policies ranging from …
Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses the EU AI Liability Directive’s Impact on Artificial Intelligence Legal Risks
On September 28, 2022, the European Commission released a proposal to change the legal landscape for companies developing and implementing artificial intelligence in EU Member States. This AI Liability Directive would require Member States to implement rules that would significantly …
Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Executive Order Paving Way for New EU-U.S. Data Transfer Framework
On October 7, 2022, U.S. President Biden signed Executive Order 14086 on Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities (the “Order”). The administrative Order creates new protections applicable to cross-border data sharing through a phased implementation process and is …
Sullivan & Cromwell Discusses EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Requirements
European Union leaders have reached a provisional political agreement on a revised Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”) that would introduce more detailed sustainability reporting requirements for all “large” EU companies and companies with securities (including low denomination debt …
ISS Discusses Global Crackdown on ESG Greenwashing
The meteoric global rise of ESG investing is increasingly being met with an equally ambitious regulatory disclosure regime, and, targeting greenwashing, policymakers are beginning to bare their teeth. In the latest salvo, on 25 May the US Securities and Exchange …
Why Corporate America Should Pay Attention to the Proposed EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence
On February 23, 2022, the European Commission issued its long-awaited proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (the Proposed Directive). Under the Proposed Directive, large companies operating in the EU market must identify, prevent, and mitigate any actual …
Mandatory vs. Voluntary ESG Disclosure, Efficiency, and Real Effects
In recent years, several countries have imposed disclosure requirements on public firms for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. These mandates have also been accompanied by the European Union’s wide-reaching Non-Financial Reporting Directive, effective in 2018 (Directive 2014/95/EU). Similar legislative …
When Should You Abstain? A Call for a Global Rule of Insider Trading
The core concepts of securities regulation tend to be similar across jurisdictions. However, there are differences that may seem small and insignificant at first glance but in fact generate the potential for arbitrage by the kind of sophisticated actors that …
Kirkland & Ellis Discusses Cross-Border Transfers of Personal Data
In the wake of the landmark judgment in Schrems II in July 2020 (which invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield with immediate effect) (as reported by us here), the European Commission has recently adopted a number of hotly anticipated (at …
Comparative Corporate Governance
With the increasing internationalization of law and legal scholarship, comparative corporate governance has seen a burgeoning volume of research from a practical, theoretical, and empirical perspective. Practically speaking, both internationally and within individual countries, most corporate governance research deals with …
A Social Enterprise Company in EU Organizational Law?
In my recent article, A Social Enterprise Company in EU Organizational Law?, I discuss the present and future regulation of social enterprises in Europe. For the moment, social enterprises – like other “social economy” organizations – have been harnessed …
Skadden Discusses Blowing the Whistle Under EU Law
On October 23, 2019, the European Parliament and the European Council adopted the Whistleblower Protection Directive (Directive) to set a minimum standard for the protections EU member states must provide to whistleblowers.
For the first time, whistleblowers are protected under …