Legal News

On July 16, 2020, The National Association of Construction Auditors (“NACA”) hosted a roundtable discussion titled “Construction 2021 - What Do We Expect and How Do We Diversify?”. One recurring topic brought up during the discussion was how organizations can better prepare to handle potential cash flow issues and related bankruptcy issues. A serious outcome of these issues that was also discussed is the potential terminations of contracting parties, which raises the question of what...By: F...

In hotly anticipated comments on Thursday—and yes, such a designation applies to a speech on monetary policy—Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell “announced a major shift in how the central bank guides the economy, signaling it will make job growth pre-eminent and will not raise interest rates to guard against coming inflation just because the unemployment rate is low.” The new plan forward comes after an almost-2-year review of the Fed’s monetary policy strategy....By: Robins Kaplan LLP

In a recent decision reversing FCC-imposed conditions on Charter Communications’ 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals raised significant questions about the FCC’s authority to adopt conditions on mergers governing future business practices. While the court stopped short of finding that the FCC lacks authority to impose such conditions, it did leave that issue open for future challenges, and the two judges in the majority signaled a...B...

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae recently announced, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, a new adverse market refinance fee to be imposed on certain refinance mortgages.  Initially, the fee was effective for refinance mortgages with settlement dates on or after September 1, 2020.  However, on August 25, 2020, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) directed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to delay the implementation date until December 1, 2020.......By: Weiner Brodsky Kider PC

On August 12, Baker Donelson’s Clinton Sanko sat down with Hal Brooks, CEO of HaystackID, and Andrea Wallack, now President of HaystackID, via WebEx. Hal, Andrea and Clinton covered HaystackID's and NightOwl's merger, which was announced on August 4, 2020. Hal will be returning to the show later in the year, to cover the combined entity in more detail; Andrea was the CEO of NightOwl prior to the merger. For this special preview, the group discussed a variety of topics around the integration of....

On August 12, Baker Donelson’s Clinton Sanko sat down with Hal Brooks, CEO of HaystackID, and Andrea Wallack, now President of HaystackID, via WebEx. Hal, Andrea and Clinton covered HaystackID's and NightOwl's merger, which was announced on August 4, 2020. Hal will be returning to the show later in the year, to cover the combined entity in more detail; Andrea was the CEO of NightOwl prior to the merger. For this special preview, the group discussed a variety of topics around the integration of....

On August 12, Baker Donelson’s Clinton Sanko sat down with Hal Brooks, CEO of HaystackID, and Andrea Wallack, now President of HaystackID, via WebEx. Hal, Andrea and Clinton covered HaystackID's and NightOwl's merger, which was announced on August 4, 2020. Hal will be returning to the show later in the year, to cover the combined entity in more detail; Andrea was the CEO of NightOwl prior to the merger. For this special preview, the group discussed a variety of topics around the integration of....

Mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare industry have been on the upswing in recent years, and even with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the layoffs, furloughs, and financial losses that have followed in its wake; the market remains surprisingly active. Hospitals and health systems announced 14 transactions during the second quarter of 2020—not significantly lower than the 19 transactions reported in Q2 of 2020....By: K&L Gates LLP

Technology-assisted review (TAR) comes in many flavors and can help significantly decrease the amount of manual review required for a matter. That said, not all TAR tools are created equal. Standard TAR workflows can be significantly enhanced by thinking outside the box, increasing a model’s efficiency, decreasing the number of documents needing manual review, enhancing review consistency, and moreover, decreasing costs. Here we examine three such techniques along with associated case studies.....

The majority of middle-market M&A has followed a similar structure for quite some time: while ensuring normalized working capital, the seller sweeps “Cash” and pays off all “Debt” at closing. The nuance, of course, lies in the definitions of “Cash” and “Debt.” “Cash” is usually a straightforward definition and excludes restricted cash, as well as checks and wires in transit. On the other hand, the definition of “Debt” usually takes up one-half to three-quarters of a page and, with li...