Business law firm sees new players enter the market offering legal advice

Today Lydian, one of the most prominent Belgian business law firms, celebrates its tenth anniversary. Lately the firm has seen new players enter the market offering legal advice. “The Big Four, legal interim offices: nowadays everyone offers their services in legal advice,” explains managing partner Jan Hofkens. “However our business model, based on the one hand on tailor-made niches and daily client support on the other, continues to bear fruit.”

Het Employment, Pensions & Benefits departement van het kantoor Lydian heeft bij Intersentia een boek gepubliceerd over 20 jaar Wet Ontslagregeling Personeelsafgevaardigden. De wet voorziet in een bijzondere ontslagbescherming voor (kandidaat-)personeelsafgevaardigden van de ondernemingsraad en het comité.

Het vastgoedteam van advocatenkantoor Lydian werd door Corporate INTL uitgeroepen tot Real Estate Law Firm 2010.

Vanaf 1 december wordt Prof. Dr. Alexander De Becker Of Counsel bij Lydian waar hij het departement Real Estate, Environment & Regulatory zal versterken en zich verder zal toeleggen op alle aspecten van tewerkstelling bij de overheid.

For Producers

• adapted balancing tariffs (correction factor up to 125 MWh) for new producers (i.e. having less than 5% of total production);
• new regulation on supply of ancillary services (per MW for respectively primary, secondary and tertiary reserves);
• tender procedure organised by the Energy Minister to attract new investments in production capacity.

Last week, the European Commission published its long-expected guidelines concerning the application of the Gender Directive (2004/113/EC) after the Test-Achats ruling of the European Court of Justice. As is well-known, the judgment provides that the use of different premiums and benefits for women and men in private insurance will no longer be allowed as of 21 December 2012. After the Test-Achats ruling, a couple of questions arose as to the application of the ruling on running contracts, the effects to the use of age and disability as a differentiation factor in insurance contracts and the effects on occupational pensions.

Dans une affaire portée récemment à la connaissance du Tribunal de Commerce de Liège, la question de la compétence territoriale de ce tribunal avait été soulevée.

La question de la concrétisation des obligations d’information des intermédiaires d’assurance se pose depuis de nombreuses années dans le secteur. En plus de leur obligation générale d’information, les intermédiaires d’assurance se doivent de répondre à des obligations plus spécifiques contenues dans la loi Cauwenberghs du 27 mars 1995, telle qu’adaptée suite à la directive européenne sur l’intermédiation du 9 décembre 2002 (IMD 1).