Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences companies operate in a demanding environment and face diverse challenges such as pricing pressure, increased regulatory requirements and mounting costs. With this backdrop, they have, starting with non-core functions, such as IT, facilities management, finance and human resources, before moving to secondary core functions, such as research and development, manufacturing, logistics, […]
European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes draft recommendations for outsourcing to the cloud
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The European Banking Authority (EBA) has opened a consultation on its draft recommendations for financial institutions outsourcing to cloud service providers across all cloud-related domains including infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. The recommendations are intended “to clarify the EU-wide supervisory expectations if institutions intend to adopt cloud […]
Keeping Your Airline IT Resilient
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A number of major carriers have suffered high-impact IT events in the past several months. Estimates of losses in these cases have exceeded £100m. This is on top of (no doubt significant) remedial costs, reductions in share price and reputational damage. Such high-impact events are, in theory, unlikely to occur—the result of a series of […]
Is your supply chain free from human rights abuses?
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In a global economy, every supply chain should have each link inspected to ensure it has not been forged in whole or in part in a manner that involves human rights abuses. In “Is your supply chain free from human rights abuses?,” a recent piece in Outsource, our colleague Tim Wright explores what a company can do […]
Next Steps toward Brexit
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The European Commission has published its Brexit mandate with a clear focus on “citizens’ rights, the financial settlement and new external borders,” with the Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, planning to “pay great attention to Ireland during the first phase of negotiations.” In his Next Steps toward Brexit Client Alert, Pillsbury partner Tim Wright […]
SAP’s Licensing Time-Bomb
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Software giant’s victory in “indirect use” case is cause for concern for companies worldwide. On February 16, 2017, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom held that Diageo plc, a global drinks company, was liable for unauthorized use of SAP software as a result of failing to secure “Named User” licenses for its […]
Robots and Rule-makers
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Recently, governments and rule-making bodies across Europe, the UK and globally, appear to be paying increasing attention to the need for the development of legislative and regulatory frameworks in the expanding field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. With the growing use of these technologies across a wide range of industry sectors, we expect to […]
The Importance of Upfront Planning
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According to PwC’s latest biennial Global Economic Crime Survey, cyber-crime is up 20 percent since 2014 and more than half of the firms surveyed expect to become the victim of a cyber-crime in the next two years, although a third reported that they have no plan to address a cyber-incident. While we are used to […]
Sweeping New York Cyber Regulations Hit Financial Institutions March 1: Time to Look at Those Vendor Relationships
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Effective March 1, 2017, first-in-kind regulations issued by the New York Department of Financial Services (New York DFS) will begin to affect a wide array of both depository and non-depository financial institutions. The new regulations will cascade certain requirements upon these financial institutions’ third-party service providers, requiring the financial institutions to take a close look […]
“Buy American, Hire American”—From Rhetoric to Regulation
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“We will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American.” While world leaders are pondering what these words from President Trump’s Inaugural Address mean for international trade, a different question looms for U.S. Government contractors—what is on the horizon as far as the Buy American Act and similar protectionist regulations? To finish reading this […]