Commercial Awareness

U.S. Law Firms’ Retreat from China

The once rapid U.S. expansion into China’s legal sphere has now fallen victim to retrenchment. After China acceded to the World Trade Organisation in the early 2000s, a surge in global trade and globalisation fuelled U.S. law firms’ expansion into the Chinese market as the need for international legal services on cross-border transactions and IPOs skyrocketed. This once-vibrant legal landscape has since declined due to geopolitical tensions, slowed economic growth, and manda

Sham Alkhder

Oct 27, 20252 min read

Rising Interest Rates that Reshapes Private Equity Deals

After several years of safe sailing and cheap borrowing, the global market has recently adjusted for private equity to a new and challenging landscape which includes high interest rates and higher standards of credit control and regulations. This shift in the trend has forced private equity firms to restructure their investment strategies, rethink how they add value and how they can exit deals when necessary . Due to these trends, the market has become quieter than before. T

Howard Hii Dai Jie

Oct 27, 20252 min read

Who owns ‘ICELAND’?

Imagine a sovereign nation initiating legal proceedings against a supermarket chain. This may sound like a crazy hypothetical, but believe it or not this actually happened. In 2016 the Republic of Iceland, a Nordic island state with a population of approximately 370,000 started legal proceedings against Iceland Foods Ltd., the prominent UK-based frozen food retailer operating over 1,000 stores across Europe. At the heart of this conflict lies a fundamental question: can a pr

Elliot Burcher

Oct 18, 20252 min read

The Question of the Digital Pound

The digital pound, ‘Britcoin’, is a central bank digital currency (CBDC) proposed by the Bank of England and HM Treasury. In 2023, the Bank of England released the Digital Pound Consultation Paper. In this paper, the Bank outlined the timeline and the future need for the digital pound while weighing, to a certain extent, the benefits and detriments of introducing it. In this article, we examine the justifications for introducing the digital pound, as well as the arguments a

Sham Alkhder

Oct 14, 20253 min read

FTC v Amazon: The Modern Monopoly Question

In September 2023, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with 17 state attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against Amazon U.S. under antitrust law. The case alleges that Amazon has been employing unfair practices to maintain monopoly power in online retail and marketplace services. This is a significant case as it marks one of the major cases in U.S. antitrust law in relation to Big Tech’s digital dominance since the lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. The FTC’s C

Sham Alkhder

Oct 14, 20252 min read

Vicarious Liability: When Employers Are Held Responsible

In medicine and law alike, accountability matters. But what happens when harm is caused not by a company itself, but by someone working for it? The legal concept of vicarious liability answers that question. It allows an employer to be held legally responsible for the actions or negligence of an employee if those actions occurred in the course of their employment. In healthcare, this principle often arises when patients suffer harm at the hands of hospital staff. If a nurse o