Insights

Although alternative fee arrangements are growing in popularity and sophistication, they still face institutional obstacles to wider adoption. Matching the fee to the work is seen as difficult, so many departments stick to the familiar billable hour. Kobre & Kim’s Alan Guy sat down with Legal Dive to explain why.

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Several crypto companies have been reported to be in distress over the past few weeks, including Celsius, Babel Finance and CoinFlex, with digital asset broker Voyager filing for bankruptcy this week. Kobre & Kim’s Daniel Saval, who focuses on the intersection of digital currency and insolvency, sat down with MarketWatch to explain what this means for customers.

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In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing a few months ago, Coinbase warned that customers could lose their crypto assets if the exchange went bankrupt. Voyager’s bankruptcy filing this week will test the question raised by Coinbase’s warning: what will happen to customers’ crypto if the company holding it goes under? Kobre & Kim’s Daniel Saval provides his insight in a Protocol FinTech newsletter.

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For litigants and parties in Brazil, the broad scope of U.S. discovery may come as a surprise. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court recently foreclosed Section 1782 discovery when the sole foreign proceeding involved is a private international arbitration, there are still ways Brazilian litigants can leverage U.S. discovery opportunities, as Kobre & Kim’s Gabriela Ruiz, Martin De Luca and Scott Nielson explain in an article for Law360.

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Undeterred by the pandemic, the U.S. art market is still going strong, but market participants should not let their guard down. Art fraud continues to be an issue, and fresh headwinds caused by increased regulatory scrutiny – both in the U.S. and abroad – and by the rise of digital art and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) means continued vigilance is advised, Kobre & Kim’s Alexandria Swette and Lara Levinson explained when they sat down with Citywealth.

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The implementation of a poison pill by Twitter’s board of directors in response to Elon Musk’s acquisition may have increased the final offer accepted by the board by up to US $1 billion, demonstrating the effectiveness of this measure at empowering the board. As Kobre & Kim’s Greater China-based lawyers Jason Kang and Chang Liu – together with analyst Kairu Huang – wrote in Caijing, Chinese companies can gain much from poison pills in corporate disputes.

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Recent U.S. federal court decisions have reeled back the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), expanding due process rights and defenses for foreign defendants. Kobre & Kim’s Evelyn Sheehan and Carolina Leung unpack what this means in an article for The Anti-Corruption Report.

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As digital asset and cryptocurrency fraud proliferate, recovering stolen funds means applying traditional asset recovery techniques in newer and more innovative ways. In Chambers’ latest International Fraud and Asset Tracing Global Practice Guide, Kobre & Kim’s Evelyn Sheehan, David McGill, Benjamin Sauter and Amanda Tuminelli walk through how, with the help of enhanced blockchain forensics, civil litigation and government seizures, victims of fraud can successfully make themselves whole again.

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The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) China Initiative has long been criticized for unfairly targeting Chinese nationals and people of Chinese descent, particularly professors and researchers. Its termination, however, does not signal relief – rather, the U.S. is moving on to a new Nation-State Threats Strategy, which has broader goals, targets and tools in mind. Kobre & Kim’s China-based lawyers Wade Weems and Chang Liu, together with specialist analyst Kairu Huang, unpacked the coming enforcement risks for Chinese entities in an article for Caixin Global.

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As criminals increasingly turn to cryptocurrencies, law enforcement agencies around the world have found themselves seizing more of the assets and having to learn how to handle the unique challenges of this new technology. Kobre & Kim’s Michael Sherwin, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, unpacked the issues when he spoke with Bloomberg.

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Recent events – including continuing doubts about the UK Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) existence, the ousting of the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, the lack of investigation into alleged misconduct by politicians and the sustained trend of private prosecutions – have led to questions about the independence of prosecution authorities in England and Wales. Kobre & Kim’s Miranda Ching – a former case controller and prosecutor at the SFO – shared her perspective during an episode of The Fountain Court Chambers Podcast.

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Though China Evergrande Group, the indebted Chinese property giant, has reached an agreement in principle with certain offshore creditors to pay legal fees in connection with restructuring negotiations, bondholders have options if restructuring negotiations eventually reach a stalemate. Kobre & Kim’s John Han, who has deep experience monetizing claims related to Greater China for distressed debt investors, told The Wall Street Journal how an enforcement scenario might unfold.

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Though China Evergrande Group, the indebted Chinese property giant, has reached an agreement in principle with certain offshore creditors to pay legal fees in connection with restructuring negotiations, bondholders have options if restructuring negotiations eventually reach a stalemate. Kobre & Kim’s John Han, who has deep experience monetizing claims related to Greater China for distressed debt investors, told The Wall Street Journal how an enforcement scenario might unfold.

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The Cayman Islands is a key offshore jurisdiction for judgment creditors in cross-border enforcement campaigns. Kobre & Kim’s Cayman-based Jalil Asif KC, Peter Tyers-Smith and Ilona Groark detailed the main insights in the jurisdiction for creditors in a chapter of International Comparative Legal Guide’s “Enforcement of Foreign Judgments 2022.”

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Catastrophes hit countries in many forms, and their impact can be multiplied by a failure in governance and compounded by economic vulnerability and social instability. Policymakers and citizens alike should understand the nature of the risks facing their country to avoid disaster. Kobre & Kim analyst John Miller, a Global Governance Fellow for the Global Governance Forum, co-authored a report for the forum that captures these risks in the inaugural edition of the Global Catastrophic Risk Index.

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