April 2016

You know, there’s never a dull moment when one reports on the regulatory states’ endless and so often fruitless and wrong-headed tinkering with the global economy. So now… let’s talk bail-in. The bail-in regime, which was adopted by all European Union countries (other than Poland) and implemented on January 1, 2016 (European Economic Area (EEA) members Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein are required to adopt the regime by December 31, 2016), permits European financial regulators to “bail-in” a failing institution by cancelling, writing-down, or converting into equity certain of the institution’s unsecured liabilities. Affected institutions must include a contractual recognition clause in its non-European-law governed contracts, so that all counterparties acknowledge that the institution’s liabilities are potentially subject to bail-in and agree to be bound by them.
Continue Reading Bail-In, or Just Bailing?

On March 20, 2016, President Obama became the first United States president in almost 90 years to visit the island of Cuba, located a mere 90 miles from the coast of Florida—signaling not only a renewed diplomatic relationship between the United States and the communist country, but also, the dawning of a new commercial age which will undoubtedly transform Cuba and its real estate industry.
Continue Reading Cuba and the Booming Commercial Real Estate Industry to Come