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Greg Lascelles

Greg Lascelles advises clients in high-stakes matters with significant financial or reputational risk. His broad-based practice covers complex international commercial litigation, arbitration, regulatory investigations and Parliament Select Committee hearings.

He acts for major corporates, financial institutions, entrepreneurs and individuals, with a broad range of experience across financial services, life sciences, technology, manufacturing, construction, music, sport, real estate, and consumer goods. His cases involve disputes relating to interpretation, M&A disputes (warranties, indemnities and earn-outs), bonus and remuneration, Companies Act matters, shareholder disputes, data litigation, securities litigation (misselling, mismanagement and close-outs) and disputes involving serious issues of fraud. He has been involved in groundbreaking High Court and FCA disputes relating to, among other things, market abuse and collective selling, as well as in the Supreme Court on the interpretation of standard contractual clauses. Greg's regulatory matters (including at the FCA, FRC, SFO and Insolvency Service) relate to market abuse and financial statement reporting. As well as regular advice to clients on contract drafting and risk avoidance, he has recently been advising on developments in FDI and national security legislation.

Greg's recent High Court cases have been listed in The Lawyer's Top 20 cases of the year in 2019 and 2020 and he is currently advising on one of the most significantly complex corporate investigations the FCA has conducted and one of the largest director disqualification cases to have been brought by the Secretary of State. Greg's pro bono work includes representing a child imprisonment campaigning charity in references to the Supreme Court and ECHR, and Freedom of Information Act requests for other groups. He can and does advise clients in English, French and Spanish.

The UK government has reported a successful start to the implementation of the National Security and Investment Act 2021 (the “NSIA” or “Act”). During the first three months (Jan-March 2022) in which the new NSIA regime has been active, the Investment Screening Unit (“ISU”) received 222 filings and reviewed 17 transactions in depth. Of those 17 transactions, three have been cleared unconditionally, with the other 14 transactions still under review at the end of the reporting period.

Mandatory NSIA filings, which represented 196 of the total flings, were most commonly made in six sectors: defence, military and dual-use, critical suppliers to government, artificial intelligence, data infrastructure and advanced materials.  There were significantly fewer filings in other sectors, with fewer than five filings per sector in areas such as synthetic biology, civil nuclear, advanced robotics and transport.

Collectively, these figures and other data suggest that the NSIA regime is operating, so far, broadly in line with expectations. While there are fewer filings than expected overall, this may reflect a broader global slowdown in M&A and investment activity. The ISU further reports that it is meeting, and often working well within, the maximum statutory time periods for the assessment of filings. The ISU indicates its willingness to complete reviews expeditiously where possible, including for in-depth assessments.Continue Reading UK National Security and Investment Regime Working Well

Major Development in UK Foreign Investment Law and Policy

The UK government has published long-awaited draft legislation that, if made law, will introduce significant new powers to scrutinise Foreign Direct Investment (“FDI”). The National Security & Investment Bill (the “NSI Bill” or the “Bill”), is proposed to introduce mandatory filing obligations and pre-clearance requirements for all transactions in the most sensitive sectors, irrespective of transaction value and without the application of any other de-minimis thresholds.
Continue Reading UK FDI: National Security and Investment Bill is Published

The EU Regulation on Foreign Direct Investment (2019/452) (the “EU FDI Regulation”) will enter into force fully on October 11, 2020. Most notably, on this date, a cooperation and information sharing mechanism among Member States and the European Commission in respect of foreign direct investment (“FDI”) that has an ‘EU-dimension’ will come into effect.

As October 11 approaches, there is renewed attention on how the EU cooperation and information sharing mechanism will operate in practice and impact upon transactions entered into by foreign investors in the EU.

In addition, many EU Member States have been making preparations to ensure that their domestic laws permit the gathering and sharing of information on FDI to a degree necessary to engage in such cooperation activities among EU partners and the European Commission. In Sweden, for example, a recent legislative proposal has provided for implementation of the EU FDI Regulation in the near-term, while wider ranging measures that will otherwise enhance and update FDI laws and screening powers in Sweden are proposed to be brought into law at a later date.

In this blogpost, we consider the implementation of the EU FDI Regulation in the UK particularly, and in light of the forthcoming end to the Brexit transition period.Continue Reading UK is left out of EU cooperation on Foreign Direct Investment, and will soon be “foreign”

On June 22, 2020, the UK Government introduced legislation to Parliament that further strengthens its ability to intervene in transactions on national security and other public interest grounds.

Specifically, the UK Government has sought additional powers to intervene in transactions where there is need to preserve the capability of the UK to respond to a public health emergency or mitigate its effects. These new powers relating to public health emergencies came into effect on June 23, 2020. This development in the UK is the latest in a line of measures introduced in other European jurisdictions to tighten foreign direct investment (FDI) screening rules in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, the UK Government took this opportunity to propose expanding the list of sectors for which lower intervention thresholds apply in the UK, to include artificial intelligence, cryptographic authentication technology and advanced materials. These measures relating to critical technology sectors will come into effect at a later date, following Parliamentary debate and approval by both Houses of Parliament.Continue Reading UK Introduces Targeted New Powers to Scrutinise Foreign Investment