Insights

General Policy icon

The National Security and Investment Bill

General Policy

Stephen Adams
|

Stephen Adams, Senior Director, and Max von Thun, Senior Associate, presented a webinar on the UK's National Security and Investment Bill currently making its way through Parliament. The bill contains proposals for a new, far more stringent UK national security investment screening regime that would replace the existing system enshrined in the UK Enterprise Act.

Read more
General Politics

The bigger question behind the right to work from home

General Politics

Stephen Adams
|

The German coalition government has confirmed that it plans to push ahead with plans to give workers a legal right to work from home. This idea was floated back in the Spring when lockdowns began, and some unions began to advocate a framework that would prevent employers hurrying people back into offices. There is still a lot we don’t know about the German law, including…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

Treaty scrutiny: working practices

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

The House of Lords European Union Committee published its report Treaty scrutiny: working practices. This was prepared by its International Agreements Sub-Committee. Global Counsel Senior Director Stephen Adams gave evidence to the Committee on treaty negotiation and trade agreements. You can read the report and review its linked evidence here. 

Read more
Financial services icon

Foreign investment: rising tides of politics in regulation

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
|

Recent years have seen important global shifts in both the policy frameworks for screening inward foreign investment and the ways in which they are applied. These shifts come against a backdrop of protectionist political rhetoric and anxieties about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) in traditionally open economies.

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

Interpreting the UK's new tariff regime

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

The UK government has published today the UK’s future MFN tariff schedule - the UK Global Tariff (UKGT). This proposed schedule will replace the EU’s Common External Tariff (CET) on 1 January 2021 and will apply to all imports into the UK on an MFN basis under ‘WTO terms’. Its main trust has been on simplification and, in parts, also liberalisation.

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

Covid and consumption abroad: a Mode 2 crisis

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

One of the first things services trade specialists learn is that trade in services is not like trade in goods. One of the most fundamental ways in which it is different is that the consumer and supplier of an internationally traded service are often physically in the same market. It is their economic nationality that matters, not their location on different sides of a…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

More or less trade in the fight against covid-19?

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

Senior Director Stephen Adams speaks to Trade Practice Lead Daniel Capparelli about the wave of trade policy measures we have seen in response to covid-19.

Read more
General Policy icon

US policy update: Sanders surges and Trump threatens GPA withdrawal

General Policy

Stephen Adams
|

This US election cycle, GC team members in the Washington, DC and London offices are holding a series of conversations on the elections and wider US policy issues, and how each might impact investors and companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Below is a brief extract from the second conversation in the series, which begins by looking at the recent Sanders surge in the…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

The Politics of Trade

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

Global Counsel held its second annual ‘Politics of…’ conference on 16 January 2020, focusing on trade. Panellists from across business, government and civil society debated the implications of dramatic political and technological change on trade policy. 

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

UK investment policy

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

The International Trade Committee has published the report of its inquiry into post-Brexit international investment arrangements: UK investment policy. The report reviews a wide range of important international investment issues linked to the UK’s exit from the EU.

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

EU-China trade defence: the politics of legal ambiguity

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

China’s recent withdrawal of its challenge to the EU’s new methodology for calculating domestic prices in trade defence cases concerning China sidesteps what was looking like a probable defeat in the WTO. In doing so it leaves a measure of ambiguity in an important part of the WTO rulebook. The EU might have preferred a clear win, but no clear judgement also serves an…

Read more
General Policy icon

Is technology changing what a company is?

General Policy

Stephen Adams
|

The company has long been the cornerstone of advanced capitalism, providing an imperfect but acceptable equilibrium between workers, executives and governments. In this podcast, Senior Director, Stephen Adams, and Practice Lead, Tom King, discuss how new technologies are knocking firms off balance, as elite workers seek different forms of compensation beyond the material.

Read more
General Policy icon

Realising the future of urban mobility

General Policy

Stephen Adams
|

Alongside our recent report produced with the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, Practice Lead Alex Dawson, Adviser Leo Ringer and Senior Director Stephen Adams discuss the challenge of how we make sure people use cars in a more efficient, cleaner, cheaper, smarter way, leading to greater use of public and active transport.

Read more
General Policy icon

NHSX: getting the basix right

General Policy

Stephen Adams
|

Global Counsel Senior Director, Stephen Adams, Practice Lead, Tom Smith and Senior Associate, Giulia Corsi discuss her latest blog on the launch of NHSX, its objectives, and its chances of succeeding.

Read more
Sustainability icon

The future of food

Sustainability

Stephen Adams
|

Are consumer preferences the main drivers behind the public policy changes? How should food systems change to meet growing demand, from increasing productivity, reducing waste and changing diets? Listen to Senior Director, Stephen Adams, Practice Lead for Sustainability, Elizabeth Beall and Associate, Mollie Brennan discuss the future of food in the UK, Europe and…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

UK-US Trade: Is the NHS 'on the table'?

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

There are few UK political issues like the NHS – beloved, sacrosanct and elaborately celebrated and protected by politicians of almost any stripe. So it is inevitable that political alarm bells ring at the idea that the UK’s national health service would be ‘on the table’ in a possible UK-US trade agreement – an idea that got some airplay during President Trump’s visit to…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

Living with a changing US approach to trade policy

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

WORLD: Following an event with European Commission DG Trade representative with businesses, trade unions and EU member states representatives, Global Counsel Senior Director, Stephen Adams, Head of Europe, Tom White and Practice Lead for Trade, Daniel Capparelli, discuss EU-US trade tensions, including Trump’s trade policy and new trade agreement negotiations, challenges…

Read more
Trade and Manufacturing icon

UK-US Trade: Is the NHS ‘on the table’?

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
|

Global Counsel Practice Lead for UK Politics and Policy, Alex Dawson, is joined by Senior Director, Stephen Adams and Practice Lead for Public Services, Tom Smith, to discuss the NHS and its status in any future trade talks with the US in a post-Brexit United Kingdom, following on from President Trump's comments this week on his state visit to the UK and Ireland.

Read more