On March 23, 2020, Stephanie Avakian and Steven Peikin, co-directors of the Securities & Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) Division of Enforcement, issued a statement reminding public companies, officers, and directors of their responsibilities related to material, non-public information in connection to the COVID-19 public health emergency.

On March 31, 2020, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Board”) announced that it has decided to delay the effective date of its final rules revising the Board’s framework for determining whether a company controls another for purposes of the Bank Holding Company Act or the Home Owners’ Loan Act (the “Final Control Regulation”). The Final Control Regulation was to become effective on April 1, 2020, but pursuant to the Board’s new release, the effective date has been pushed back by two quarters to September 30, 2020. The Board did not make or discuss any substantive changes to, or interpretations of, the Final Control Regulation. For more on the content of the Final Control Regulation, please refer to our previous client note, Federal Reserve Board Adopts Final Control Rule.

The global economy has been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and a significant drop in oil prices. The combination of these two factors coupled with the uncertainty surrounding the length of time COVID-19 will hold a significant portion of the world’s population captive has brought the primary debt markets to a grinding halt.

On March 6, 2020, the Alternative Rate Reference Committee (ARRC), the Federal Reserve’s LIBOR-transition working group comprised of private-sector entities and industry regulators, released its New York State legislative proposal for amending financial contracts that lack adequate fallback language.^[1]

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous European jurisdictions, including the European Union, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium have enacted short sale bans or taken other actions in an attempt to stabilize financial markets and maintain investor confidence. 

In the face of the coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (the “Fed”) and the U.S. federal banking agencies have announced several market and supervisory actions to address the sudden market stress and strain.

In light of the growing pandemic of COVID-19, the French government has made a number of unprecedented decisions in order to support business activities. Among an extensive panoply of measures relating to short time work, tax relief, capital markets and other areas, the French Government has introduced a EUR 300 billion State guarantee scheme (the “Scheme”) for new money loans to be granted to French entities by financial institutions.

If you are a decision-maker or part of a COVID-19 response team at a U.S. business, you are making urgent, daily decisions that affect the health and wellbeing of your workers, customers and suppliers, as well as the long-term viability of the enterprise. At some point in the near term, your attention will need to turn to questions about your company’s retirement plans: whether to offer your workers the ability to take advantage of applicable relief provisions included in the recently enacted CARES Act; whether to delay or modify the funding schedule for single-employer pension plans sponsored by your company; whether to adjust matching or profit-sharing contributions for workers; and how to address current and possible future declines in the value of any company stock fund that may be part of a defined contribution retirement plan.

On 28 March 2020, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced key measures to protect companies and businesses facing major funding and operational difficulties in the current COVID-19 pandemic[1].

The first wave of discussion about the impact of COVID-19 on EU merger control was very much on the practical and procedural. What, impact if any, will the response to this crisis have on the substantive assessment of mergers going forward?