The report’s recommendations cover a number of areas, including culture and strategy, monitoring and reporting, investor engagement, policy formation and employee training, and philanthropy.
By Paul A. Davies and Michael D. Green
A new report from the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner draws attention to how the financial services industry can help address the issue of modern slavery. The report, “Preventing Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking: An Agenda for Action across the Financial Services Sector” (the Report), aims to sound “a call to action for the industry”. The Report, which was released on 18 January 2021, is the result of a research and outreach project led by Themis in partnership with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s Office and TRIBE Freedom Foundation.
As the Report notes, in relation to financial services, modern slavery is less overt and usually refers to employment of low skilled contract workers such as cleaning or catering workers. Continue Reading
While much attention continues to be paid to the implementation and maintenance of effective whistleblowing and speak-up frameworks (which tend to focus predominantly on reporting post-event, coupled with safeguarding the ‘reporter’ from any adverse consequences), and to the importance of creating a ‘psychologically safe’ environment in the workplace, there has to date been relatively little focus on the real-time interventional role of the employee bystander. For example, in a scenario in which an employee observes ‘toxic’ conduct directed at a colleague by a fellow employee, such as bullying, harassment or racism, should the witnessing employee have an obligation to intervene on behalf of the ‘victim’ (in addition to an expectation that they subsequently report the incident)?
This annual 
The SFC’s consultation on an investor identification regime for the securities market
This blog post summarises key regulatory developments in Hong Kong and Singapore during November 2020, including:
In November 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (the MAS) published a 
The long-awaited delegated acts (Delegated Acts) required by Regulation (EU) 2019/2089 (the Low Carbon Benchmarks Regulation), which amends the EU Benchmarks Regulation (BMR), have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ). The Delegated Acts will enter into force on 23 December 2020, 20 days after their publication on 3 December 2020. No substantial changes have been made to the official texts since the Commission adopted the Delegated Acts on 17 July 2020.