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R (Greyhound Board of Great Britain Ltd) v Welsh Ministers [2026] EWHC 670 (Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling reinforces the constitutional divide between the courts and the legislature. It explains that the scheme and framework of the Government of Wales Act 2006 (GWA 2006) embody that separation of powers, and that any judicial attempt to recognise and enforce a common law obligation on Welsh Ministers to consult prior to introducing legislation in the Senedd would trespass upon that boundary. This is not a departure from established principle; case law has already upheld comparable rules for lawmakers in Scotland and at Westminster. However, this is the first express confirmation of the position for Welsh lawmakers, and the first time this dimension of the GWA 2006 has been analysed in such depth. The court examined earlier
The solution arrived through the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), a quasi‑judicial body handling mass claims, created under UN Security Council Resolution 687. By addressing environmental harm—most notably via its ‘F4’ claim class—the UNCC set a seminal benchmark shaping how international law and contemporary arbitral panels allocate financial responsibility for wartime ecological devastation. With present-day wars in areas such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East bringing dam breaches, strikes on chemical facilities, and the burning of farmland, the UNCC’s legacy endures as an essential reference point for states, global investors, and companies engaged in post‑conflict arbitration. The F4 claims: Quantifying the unquantifiable Prior to the 1990s, mechanisms in international law for war reparations overwhelmingly favoured property loss, foregone earnings, and bodily injury. The natural world was commonly treated as a mute, non-compensable victim of armed hostilities...
Understanding the farming business as a business Many farms still use long-standing structures that arose by habit, not strategy. Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common. While once effective, such setups can cause major issues around succession, tax planning and involving the next generation. A corporate team can take a fresh, business-led view of the farm, asking: Who owns the land and other critical assets? Who manages daily operations? Who carries the risk and who enjoys the return? What is the enduring plan for succession? From this review, the team can confirm whether the current setup is fit for purpose or if an alternative — for example an updated partnership agreement, a company, a limited liability partnership, or a blended model — would better meet the family’s aims. Tax efficiency through joined-up advice Tax sits at the centre of most
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The UK’s largest bank is deploying automated systems to spot fraud under the UK offence that came into force on 1 September 2025. Among them is Google AML AI, built with Google, which scans some 900 million transactions every month across 40 million customer accounts. Jennifer Calvery, HSBC’s group head of financial crime, told Law360 that Google AML AI and other automation help underpin the bank’s defence to the “failure to prevent fraud” offence. The legislation exposes companies to criminal action where preventative controls are judged inadequate, and major lenders such as HSBC fall within scope. The regime captures businesses meeting any two of the following three tests: More than 250 employees Turnover above £36m Assets of £18m or more HSBC's multi-tier strategy Calvery said strong leadership, staff training programmes and sharing intelligence across the industry are just as critical. Before joining HSBC, she held a...
EFAMA argued that distributed ledger technology ( DLT) can effectively remove current growth hurdles created by fragmentation across capital markets where shares and bonds are traded. DLT is a digital, distributed method of recording financial transactions at the same time in multiple different locations. It also lets issuers tokenise assets into transferable digital tokens and accelerates settlement by applying uniform procedures throughout the EU. Businesses participating in an EU‑wide DLT pilot are urging a shift towards a modernised, permanent legal regime, to foster competition and create a fairer level playing field with conventional finance. “ A large number of European companies from across the value chain have invested heavily in DLT and are at the forefront of the financial sector’s digital shift,” said Tanguy van de Werve, EFAMA’s director general. “ These initiatives ought to be matched at......
Barclays Bank received a penalty of £42m from the FCA in July 2025 after the lender allowed millions in criminal proceeds to be paid into the bank account of a company controlled by UK socialite James Stunt. The sanction also covered the regulator’s action over anti-money laundering shortcomings linked to Wealth Tek, a wealth manager owned by racehorse owner John Dance. Wealth Tek halted operations in April 2023 when the FCA uncovered 'serious regulatory issues'. Dance is due to stand trial on fraud and money laundering charges in September 2027. As part of the resolution, Barclays issued a 'voluntary payment' to clients of Wealth Tek......
In this issue: UK, EU and international regulators and bodies Authorisation, approval and supervision Risk management and controls Financial crime and sanctions Consumer protection Investigations, enforcement and discipline Regulation of capital markets Sustainable finance and ESG Banks and mutuals Investment funds and asset management UK Mi FID II Consumer credit, mortgage and home finance Regulation of insurance Fintech and cryptoassets Regulation of AI in FS Lex Talk®Financial Services: a Lexis®Nexis community Financial Services Enforcement Database Daily and weekly news alerts Intraday news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Latest Q& A UK, EU and international regulators and bodies FCA Chief Economist sets out risk-rebalancing growth strategy The Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) released a speech by its Chief...
For further details on the FCA Monzo fine, see: FCA fines Monzo £21m for financial crime control failings, LNB News 08/07/2025 10. Background Between 2020 and 2022, Monzo brought on more than 34,000 high-risk customers without adequate due diligence. As a result, blatantly fictitious addresses, including ‘10 Downing Street’ and ‘ Buckingham Palace’, were not challenged. The FCA noted the bank did not evolve its controls as its customer numbers grew, exposing it to contemporary fraud typologies such as synthetic identity fraud, where criminals mix genuine and fabricated data to build convincing profiles. The Monzo episode prompts the question of whether banks and other firms lean too heavily on manual AML review—a method vulnerable to inconsistency and human error. Could automated technology, particularly AI-driven tools, have helped avoid such failures? AI's helping hand Rapid progress and broad adoption of AI in recent years has shifted its role in...
In this issue: UK, EU and international regulators and bodies Authorisation, approval and supervision Prudential requirements Financial crime and sanctions Conduct requirements Complaints, compensation and claims management Investigations, enforcement and discipline Regulation of capital markets Sustainable finance and ESG Consumer credit, mortgage and home finance Regulation of insurance FSMA regulated pensions activity Payment services and systems Fintech and cryptoassets Lex Talk®Financial Services: a Lexis®Nexis community Financial Services Enforcement Database Daily and weekly news alerts Intraday news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary UK, EU and international regulators and bodies HMT consults on proposed integration of PSR functions into FCA framework HM Treasury ( HMT) has launched a consultation proposing to fold the Payment Systems Regulator’s ( PSR) remit into the Financial Conduct...
Hearing of Barclays’ appeal was scheduled to start in the Court of Appeal on 16 September 2025. It had first been timetabled for 1 July 2025, yet the court delayed matters because the Supreme Court was expected to hand down a judgment in full on undisclosed car finance commissions, which would have borne directly on the complaint advanced by Barclays. That Supreme Court decision concluded that fees paid by UK banks to motor dealers to arrange credit agreements without customers’ informed consent are lawful, ultimately overturning two of the three decisions placed before it. The......
The Taxonomy Regulation ( EU) 2020/852 establishes a system for identifying which economic activities qualify as environmentally sustainable. It is applied by both financial and non-financial companies, including to support the labelling of investments as environmentally sustainable. The delegated regulation signals a major step in the European Union’s continued refinement of its sustainable finance framework. The Commission seeks to make the regime more practical and less onerous, while still meeting the EU’s climate and environmental ambitions. Through the delegated regulation, the proposed changes to the Taxonomy Regulation aim to lighten administrative demands for financial and non-financial companies, bolster the EU’s global competitiveness, and protect the Regulation’s core aims. For more information on the new delegated regulation, see: Commission adopts Delegated Act to simplify EU Taxonomy reporting rules, LNB News 08/07/2025 17 Background on the Taxonomy Regulation In force since 2020, with reporting...
In this issue: UK, EU and international regulators and bodies Authorisation, approval and supervision Prudential requirements Financial crime and sanctions Consumer protection Complaints, compensation and claims management Investigations, enforcement and discipline Banks and mutuals Investment funds and asset management FSMA regulated pensions activity Payment services and systems Fintech and cryptoassets Lex Talk®Financial Services: a Lexis®Nexis community Financial Services Enforcement Database Daily and weekly news alerts Intraday news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary UK, EU and international regulators and bodies What to note from FCA, government financial growth proposals — Law360, Expert analysis: On 10 July 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) released its Secondary International Competitiveness and Growth Objective ( SICGO) Report 2024/25, charting how growth and...
The meeting followed closely after the DOJ released its new white-collar enforcement strategy in May 2025 and, in June 2025, respectively, its guidance on enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ( FCPA), underscoring the SFO’s revitalised drive for assertive corporate enforcement. That direction has been evident since Ephgrave assumed leadership of the SFO in September 2023, publicly pledging to accelerate investigations, and to cultivate influence and leverage through partnerships at home and abroad. Although the SFO and DOJ have long co-operated, the DOJ’s pronouncement suggests a further, welcome step towards Ephgrave’s aim for the SFO to become the preferred, default collaborator in practice. The manual explicitly envisages bringing in suitable foreign law enforcement bodies, including the SFO, at an early stage in investigations and matters touching US interests, where relevant. It instructs that, prior to opening a fresh FCPA case, US...
At an oral session of the Committee, Charlotte Clark CBE, Director of Cross-cutting Policy and Strategy at the FCA, said that secondary legislation is required to give greater clarity on the steps trustees must take to justify declining a mandated investment, as well as on regulatory rules that would need very careful design. The Pension Schemes Bill provides an exemption that permits trustees to refuse mandated investments if they consider this not in members’ interests, but Clark cautioned that this would be a difficult judgement for trustees and scheme managers, and just as challenging for regulators to evaluate thoroughly. She said the extent of that process would be set out in secondary legislation, and that it must spell out what the process involves. It is going to be a demanding assessment for the trustees or scheme manager, and then for the...
In March 2025, HM Treasury revealed plans to scrap the PSR, the watchdog for key payment rails including Faster Payments, BACS and Link, as well as the Visa and Mastercard card schemes. The PSR had earned prominence through headline-making actions, from pushing banks and payment providers to refund victims of authorised push-payment fraud, to probing the charges levied by Visa and Mastercard. The UK remains the sole nation with a standalone payments regulator, and the decision to dissolve it was framed as cutting compliance burdens for firms while simplifying reporting duties and sector oversight across the ecosystem. Ministers pledged to consult on proposals for reallocating payments responsibilities over summer 2025. Yet by July 2025, they quietly signalled—buried within a 76-page financial services growth strategy document—that the timetable had shifted to September 2025. That does not mean the market is clueless about the likely...
Emma Luxton, the SFO’s director of operations, warned that businesses that duplicate reports of the same misconduct to the office and to other white-collar enforcement bodies around the globe risk being treated as uncooperative under its refreshed guidance on corporate deferred prosecution agreements ( DPAs). Addressing an economic crime conference in Cambridge, Luxton noted that the SFO’s advice on how companies can avoid prosecution and reach a corporate resolution brands forum-shopping as the antithesis of genuine cooperation. She added: the SFO will regard behaviour as uncooperative where a company, for tactical purposes, makes an unreasonable report of offending to a different jurisdiction......
The UK's new offence of failure to prevent fraud comes into force on 1 September 2025. Large organisations could be held liable where employees, or others connected to the business, commit criminal conduct to benefit the company. Created by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 ( ECCTA 2023), the offence is touted as a tool to spark a shift in corporate culture. The intention is to push firms to tighten their procedures so the UK’s enforcers can more effectively police fraud in Britain. The Serious Fraud Office ( SFO) and the Crown Prosecution Service ( CPS) have adopted tough language, vowing to pursue companies that fail to comply. Yet lawyers do not anticipate a flood of prosecutions or corporate plea agreements, and any that do arise are expected to take years to materialise. ‘ For most in-scope companies, the house isn’t on fire,’ said Lloyd...
From 1 September 2025, the ECCTA 2023 will have further implications for managers when the failure to prevent fraud ( FTPF) offence comes into force. Managers must be able to evidence that they understand and have assessed how the ECCTA 2023’s FTPF provisions affect their businesses and compliance arrangements. They should demonstrate that they have taken account of the government’s FTPF guidance, issued in November 2024 (see: Home Office announces implementation of corporate 'failure to prevent fraud' offence, LNB News 01/09/2025 9). They will also need to evaluate the impact of the FTPF provisions on current and planned fund investments, including stakes in portfolio companies and ties with service providers, such as placement agents, who help bring investors into the funds. For managers with contractual and regulatory obligations to exercise due skill, care and diligence to prevent loss to the assets they...
UK developments FCA reports improvements in SLL market since 2023 review The Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA) has issued a letter summarising developments in the sustainability‑linked loans ( SLL) market since its 2023 review. It notes stronger market practice, featuring more resilient product structures and a move towards core sustainability performance targets that are material to borrowers’ business models. The Loan Market Association’s ( LMA) March 2025 update to the Sustainability‑ Linked Loan Principles has elevated baseline expectations. Banks are now applying declassification as a penalty for breaches, while the use of multiple sustainability coordinators is increasingly common in syndicated loans. These changes are intended to help capture the UK government’s estimated £200bn financial services opportunity by 2030. The FCA will continue to monitor the market and collaborate with the Transition Finance Council to promote the UK as a transition finance hub. See: LNB News...
On 15 July 2025, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered her second annual Mansion House speech, and published the long-awaited Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy 2035, consulted on in November 2024 (see: HMT launches call for evidence on the UK’s financial services growth and competitiveness strategy, LNB News 15/11/2024 62), together with a suite of accompanying reforms, known as the Leeds Reforms (see: Reforms and the Financial Services Growth & Competitiveness Strategy, LNB News 15/07/2025 21). This came after Reeves’ first Mansion House address in November 2024, where she unveiled a package of measures on financial services reform. Key highlights from SICGO report The SICGO report, issued alongside the FCA’s press release on modernising rules to unlock investment, also dated 15 July 2025, sets out how it plans to deliver on its secondary objective during the second half of 2025. It likewise serves as a...
In this issue: Prudential requirements Financial crime and sanctions Consumer protection Complaints, compensation and claims management Regulation of capital markets UK Mi FID II Payment services and systems Fintech and cryptoassets Lex Talk®Financial Services: a Lexis®Nexis community Financial Services Enforcement Database Daily and weekly news alerts Intraday news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Prudential requirements End-2024: EBA updates systemic importance indicators for G- SIIs The European Banking Authority ( EBA) has released a refreshed set of 13 indicators of systemic importance, with accompanying data, for the 32 largest EU institutions whose leverage ratio exposure exceeds €200bn. The package includes the most recent statistics and measures needed to identify institutions across the Banking Union and those within the Single Resolution Mechanism ( SRM). The EBA revises this...
Following its creation in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 ( ECCTA 2023), the failure to prevent fraud offence is scheduled to take effect on 1 September 2025. Under ECCTA 2023, s 199, large organisations can be made answerable for fraudulent conduct by employees, agents, subsidiaries, or others providing services for, or on behalf of, the organisation, where the wrongdoing was intended to benefit the organisation or its clients. For a case to proceed, at least one element of the underlying fraud must have occurred in the UK, or the gain or loss arising from it must have been realised in the UK. Businesses do, however, have a potential defence, as set out in the government’s guidance on the offence. Reasonable procedure In November 2024, the government issued guidance describing the reasonable procedures that companies should adopt if they are to stand a chance of...
Concealed within those measures sits section 196 of the Bill, ushering in a far‑reaching broadening of the identification doctrine so that corporate employers are answerable for any offence committed by a senior manager acting under their actual or ostensible authority, in effect. This proposed, radical uplift in organisational liability for employee conduct conspicuously omits several common‑sense protections long seen and applied in other jurisdictions. As presently framed, the legislation indeed risks producing counter‑intuitive results that the Bill’s architects can hardly have intended or envisaged. A modest handful of straightforward, pragmatic tweaks would sharpen the drafting and impose a sensible, workable limiting principle on what is otherwise a major enlargement of the identification doctrine. Identification doctrine expanded Section 196 of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 ( ECCTA 2023) extends the identification doctrine to make companies criminally responsible for specified economic offences...
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This Practice Note This Practice Note reviews mechanisms used in settling litigation. A Tomlin order consists of a consent order paired with a schedule. It operates to stay proceedings on terms that have been agreed. The provisions contained in the schedule may remain confidential. This Practice Note describes the scope of confidentiality attaching to the schedule and sets out how it differs from a standard consent order. Sample wording for a Tomlin order is included, alongside links to precedents, as well as guidance on court approval. It also addresses varying, setting aside and enforcing a Tomlin order, including the considerations the court will take into account when handling applications for each. Further guidance is provided on interpreting and applying the relevant provisions of the CPR; however, some courts and divisions impose very specific requirements for both drafting and approval, and for approaching the schedule and confidentiality issues. Accordingly, you must consider the particular rules and court guide provisions in the forum where your claim is proceeding when drawing up the Tomlin order...
Date [ date ] Parties [ name of Landlord ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Landlord) [ name of Tenant ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Tenant) [ [ name of Guarantor ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Guarantor) ] [ [ name of Mortgagee ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Mortgagee) ] Definitions Within this Deed, the terms below shall be interpreted as follows: [ Annual Rent • the annual sum reserved under the Lease; ] [ Insurance Rent • the Tenant’s share of the Landlord’s costs of insuring the Property (as set out in the Lease); ] Lease • the lease of the Property dated [ date ], entered into between (1) [ the Landlord OR [ name ...
I, [ name ], of [ address ], solemnly and sincerely state that: [ Matters to be verified, set out in numbered paragraphs ] I make this solemn statement in good conscience, believing it to be true, and pursuant to the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1835. DECLARED at [ details ] this [ day ] day of [ month and year ] Before me ................................................................................ [ signature of the person before whom the declaration is made ] A [ commissioner for oaths OR [ solicitor OR [ insert other qualification ] ] authorised to administer oaths ]...
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