Business has become more international and as a consequence Belgian business contracts are increasingly being concluded in English. This reference book brings together a number of contracts that are governed by Belgian law but drafted in English. Each model is preceded by a short introduction summarizing the most salient provisions of Belgian law relevant to that particular contract. Also, in most models, different options and alternative wording are included. The templates in this book will serve as a useful guidance for drafting a number of contracts and clauses under Belgian business law.
This book explores commercial contract law in scholarship and legal practice, suggests new research agendas and provides a forum for debate of typical issues that might benefit from further attention by scholarship and legislatures. The authors from over ten different jurisdictions take an international and comparative approach. Not confined to EU law it re-opens the debate internationally and seeks to reclaim the wider meaning of European law as rooted in geography and cultural legal heritage. There is a need to focus on commercial contracts in more detail in research and legislation. The transactional approach, the role of recent law reform, including the new French Civil Code, cross-border dealings, substantive contract law in public international law and ICSID arbitration as well as current contractual practices like OEM, CSR, contractual co-operation, sustainability and intra-corporate arbitration contribute to a wider regulatory outlook for commercial transactions.
This book analyses share purchase agreements governed by Belgian law used for company acquisitions, whereby a purchaser acquires control over a Belgian target company through the acquisition of a controlling shareholding. The object of such sale and purchase agreements is not a static, inanimate object, but consists of a shareholding in a company whose business and balance sheet evolve while the parties negotiate its acquisition. Such share purchase agreements and the negotiations leading up to them create a particular triangular interaction and relationship between the seller, the purchaser and the target company. These aspects make share purchase agreements different from, and often more complex than, sale and purchase agreements relating to other objects. The analysis set out in this book is written from a practitioner's perspective and focuses on the application of classic civil and corporate law concepts in the particular context of share purchase agreements. The theoretical background of all legal concepts is discussed and analysed, with due consideration for the practical relevance of the analysis. The reader is guided through the successive stages of a share purchase agreement. Each chapter includes a section containing sample clauses and concludes with an overview of relevant legislation, case law, legal doctrine and other sources of law. The book concludes with an index of the concepts used and a separate lexicon of the corresponding Belgian law terms in Dutch and French. Subject: Belgium Law, Company Law]
This book explores various approaches around the world regarding price term control, and particularly discusses the effectiveness of two major paths: ex ante regulatory and ex post judicial intervention. Price control and its limits are issues that affect all liberal market economies, as well as more regulated markets. For the past several years, courts in many different countries have been confronted with the issue of whether, and to what extent, they should intervene regarding price-related terms in standard form contracts – especially in the area of consumer contracts. Open price clauses, flat remunerations, price adjustment clauses, clauses giving the seller/supplier the right to ask for additional payments, bundling or partitioning practices, etc.: a variety of price related terms are used to manipulate customers’ choices, often also by exploiting their behavioral biases. The result is an unfavorable contract that is later challenged in court. However, invalidating a given price term in standard forms e.g. of a banking or utilities contract only has an inter partes effect, which means that in thousands if not millions of similar contracts, the same clauses continue to be used. Effective procedural rules are often lacking. Therefore, pricing patterns that serve to hide rather than to reveal the real cost of goods and services require special attention on the part of regulators. The aim of this book is to determine the various approaches in the world regarding price term control, and particularly to discuss the efficiency of both paths, ex ante regulatory and ex post judicial intervention. Thanks to its broad comparative analysis, this book offers a thorough overview of the methods employed in several countries. It gathers twenty-eight contributions from national rapporteurs and one supra-national rapporteur (EU) to the 2018 IACL Congress held in Fukuoka. These are supplemented by a general report presented at the same IACL Congress, which includes a comparative analysis of the national and supranational reports. The national contributors hail from around the globe, including Africa (1), Asia (5), Europe (17), the European Union (1) and the Americas (5).
This note explores the interactions between new technologies with key areas of commercial law and potential legal changes to respond to new developments in technology and businesses. Inspired by the Bali Fintech Agenda, this note argues that country authorities need to closely examine the adequacy of their legal frameworks to accommodate the use of new technologies and implement necessary legal reform so as to reap the benefits of fintech while mitigating risks. Given the cross-border nature of new technologies, international cooperation among all relevant stakeholders is critical. The note is structured as follows: Section II describes the relations between technology, business, and law, Section III discusses the nature and functions of commercial law; Section IV provides a brief overview of developments in fintech; Section V examines the interaction between technology and commercial law; and Section VI concludes with a preliminary agenda for legal reform to accommodate the use of new technologies.
Drafting International Contracts is an essential resource for anyone working in international business. The book is a straightforward, easy-to-use tool featuring all the latest trends and developments, including a summary of 25 years of meetings and discussions of the International Contracts Working Group, comprised of professional lawyers, corporate counsel, and academics. It offers a systematic analysis of the main clauses present in international contracts, providing abundant quotations of actual clauses, with critical assessments. The book fosters an understanding of how international contracts are drafted in actual practice. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.
This book presents the first thoroughgoing analysis of the contractual effect of letters of comfort as it appears in both common law and civil law systems. The commentary draws on cases from a wide variety of jurisdictions and on the full range of legal scholarship on the subject in several languages. Among the specific issues and topics raised along the way are the following: the typology of letters of comfort; the legal nature of letters of comfort; the use of letters of comfort in corporate group and banking practice; the economic explanation for the use of letters of comfort; the contractual effect of letters of comfort in French law; ‘ten commandments’ of letters of comfort; Clearly evoking the tension between business needs, the law, and judicial application, the book analyses what happens when the relationship between a lender and a creditor breaks down, or the latter becomes insolvent, and courts or arbitrators are asked to determine the legal status of a comfort letter. This is an area of practice in which lawyers in any field of business activity are inevitably concerned, and in which useful guidance is scarce. For this reason this detailed analysis will be very welcome.
This is the fourth edition of the Baker & McKenzie International Arbitration Yearbook, an annual series established by the Firm in 2007. This collection of articles is comprised of reports in key jurisdictions around the globe on arbitration. Leading lawyers of the Firm’s International Arbitration Practice Group, a division of the Firm’s Global Dispute Resolution Practice Group, report on recent developments in national laws relating to arbitration and address current arbitral trends and tendencies in the jurisdictions in which they practice. This Yearbook highlights the more important recent developments in international arbitration, without aspiring to be an exhaustive case reporter or a text-book to arbitration in the broad sense. This volume will prove a useful tool for those contemplating and using arbitration to resolve international business disputes.
Collective Bargaining for Self-Employed Workers in Europe Approaches to Reconcile Competition Law and Labour Rights Founding Editor: Roger Blanpain General Editor: Frank Hendrickx Edited by Bernd Waas & Christina Hießl The increase in the number of self-employed workers, partially in response to the advent of the platform economy, has raised the spectre of horizontal price-fixing by self-employed members of a profession. This perception, however, is at odds with international labour standards, under which self-employed persons should also be able to conclude collective agreements to some extent. It is now commonplace for companies to offer various forms of non-standard employment that shift risk from the labour engager to the labour provider – which may increase the likelihood of those workers to fall outside the legal concept of ‘employee’ and because of that affects their legal protection. Legal practitioners may then face a dilemma: what may be required under labour law may be prohibited under antitrust law. In the first comprehensive analysis of these intensely debated issues, the authors argue that there is an urgent need to address the current legal puzzle, including through regulatory measures. This must include, in particular, the existing regulation at the level of the European Union (EU), which dominates competition law in the Member States. The book combines an analysis of the supranational framework by experts in labour law as well as competition law with in-depth country reports from Member States of the EU in which regulations and/or practices of collective bargaining for the self-employed exist. Among the many issues discussed in this book are the following: collective bargaining and international labour rights; self-employed individuals and the concept of undertaking in EU competition law; the concept of ‘social dumping’; the importance of the case law of the European Court of Justice; the concept of ‘vulnerability’; competition authorities’ enforcement strategies and priorities; the concept of ‘false self-employed’; and the possible introduction of exemptions, presumptions, safe harbours, or smart regulation solutions in competition law. The book gives an insight into the legal situation in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. These reports discuss the current practice of collective bargaining and how the current law is reflected in the academic discourse on the right of self-employed people to bargain collectively. This important book, in its presentation of legally sound and effective ways to shape the application of the right to bargain collectively that are attuned to the business and technological realities of the twenty-first century, promotes an understanding of the consequences for current law and practice and offers a basis for a discussion of regulatory measures addressing existing challenges. Practitioners of labour law and competition law, national competition authorities, and other interested parties will benefit from the detailed analysis and extensive findings.
"As the book clearly explains, there are situations in which questions of contract law need to be examined by investment tribunals - mainly as preliminary or incidental questions, to determine issues such as contract liability or breach of contract, that in turn are assumed as a basis for the issues of investment law in dispute"--
