Family conned firms out of more than £327,000

A Teesside family defrauded multiple businesses of more than £327,000 in a fake invoicing scam.

Jason Huggett, 42, created invoices in favour of his family’s firms for non-existent work during his role as a facilities manager for Surrey firm, Belron International.

Now he, along with five other members of his family have been sentenced after they were convicted of fraud following a trial.

Guildford Crown Court had been told how part of Huggett’s job involved negotiating contracts and arranging for work to be carried out for the company and authorising payments.

The court was told how an internal audit at the Egham firm found discrepancies with many of the contracts he had awarded.

Between 2011 and 2013 Jason Huggett settled invoices for non-existent work to companies owned by his wife and mother, paid over the odds for fencing work by his brother-in-law’s ceiling company, and falsified expense claims, equipment sales and receipts.

He also manipulated a legitimate business relationship to obtain personal vehicles from a supplier. In total the court found he was responsible for fraud worth £262,719.

Surrey Police picture of Adam Huggett, 39, of Bakers View, Corfe Mullen, Dorset, jailed for two years for fraud
Surrey Police picture of Adam Huggett, 39, of Bakers View, Corfe Mullen, Dorset, jailed for two years for fraud

During the investigation it emerged that his brother, Adam Huggett, 39, from Corfe Mullen in Dorset, who worked as a senior project manager for the Metropolitan Police, was committing fraud against his employer.

He has been splitting larger contracts to bring them below the threshold that he was able to award and had also authorised salary payments to a “temp” worker who was employed outside of the agreed system. His fraud was valued at £126,621, much of which was paid into accounts controlled by family members.

Simone Huggett, Jason’s wife, Heather Huggett, Jason’s mother, and Darren and Justine Parker, Jason’s sister and brother in law were all also convicted of fraud.

At a sentencing hearing Jason Huggett, of Park Crescent, Midhurst, was jailed for four years and three months after being found guilty of six counts of fraud relating to his employment by Belron and two counts of fraud relating to the Metropolitan Police Service.

Adam Huggett, of Baker’s View, was found guilty of one count of fraud relating to Belron, and three counts of fraud relating to his employment by the Metropolitan Police Service. He received a sentence of two years imprisonment.

Heather Huggett, 62, of Southfield Road, Norton was found guilty of one count of fraud relating to Belron, and one count of fraud relating to the Metropolitan Police Service. She was sentenced to two years imprisonment suspended for two years.

Darren Parker, Jason’s brother-in-law, 46, of Thorntree Avenue, Thorntree, Middlesbrough, was found guilty of one count of fraud relating to Belron. He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment suspended for two years.

Justine Parker, Jason’s sister, 36, of Deighton Road, Easterside, Middlesbrough , was found guilty of one count of fraud relating to Belron. She was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment suspended for 12 months.

Simone Huggett, Jason’s wife, 42, of Park Crescent, Midhurst, was found guilty of one count of fraud relating to Belron, and one count of fraud relating to the Metropolitan Police Service. She was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment suspended for 18 months.

Following the sentencing last month Surrey Police has said it will now pursue Huggett and his family for the money that they fraudulently obtained through the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Detective Inspector Matt Durkin, head of the financial investigation unit at Surrey Police, said: “This was a very complex case, which took a substantial amount of time and effort to unravel.

“I am pleased that the judge praised the high quality of the investigating officers we have at Surrey Police.”

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Australia wants tech firms to decrypt messages

A new law has been announced in Australia which, if passed, will allow the state to force global technology companies such as Facebook and Google, to help police decrypt users’ messages which they believe were sent by extremists and criminals. Experts have warned that the weakened encryption could lead to hackers gaining access to messages too.

The new law was announced on Friday and is based on Britain’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016, dubbed the Snooper’s Charter. The new law, which will give the courts the ability to order tech companies to decrypt communications quickly, will be introduced in the Australian Parliament by November.

Speaking to the media, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, said:

“We’ve got a real problem in that the law enforcement agencies are increasingly unable to find out what terrorists and drug traffickers and paedophile rings are up to because of the very high levels of encryption…Where we can compel it, we will, but we will need the cooperation from the tech companies.”

Turnbull said that the tech companies have a “very libertarian culture” but know “morally” that they should agree to government demands to decrypt users’ content. The Attorney-General, George Brandis, said that the growth of encrypted communication applications such as Signal and iMessage were “potentially the greatest degradation of intelligence and law enforcement capability that we have seen in our lifetime.”

The Australian Federal Police has said that encrypted traffic has increased from three to 55 percent in the last few years and that 65 percent of organised crime investigations including terrorism and paedophile rings involved encryption.

Source: CGTN | Image via Shutterstock

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Legal services of both advocates and firms liable for GST

NEW DELHI: The government has clarified that there is no change in taxation of legal services in the GST era.

“There are points being raised about the applicability of GST on legal services provided by advocates — whether it is in forward charge or reverse charge… It is clarified that legal service has been defined to mean any service provided in relation to advice, consultancy or assistance in any branch of law, in any manner and includes representational services before any court, tribunal or authority,” a finance ministry statement said.

It referred to a notification issued under Central Tax Rate that states that services supplied by an individual advocate including a senior advocate by way of representational services before any court, tribunal or authority, directly or indirectly, to any business entity located in the taxable territory, including where contract for provision of such service has been entered through another advocate or a firm of advocates, or by a firm of advocates, by way of legal services, to a business entity.

The words “by way of legal services” are preceded and succeeded by comma, it said.

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Dublin is streets ahead of EU rivals as City firms plan for Brexit relocation


Its shared language and links with London have made the Irish capital first choice for banks seeking new bases from which to trade in Europe

View over Dublin’s financial centre.



Dublin is emerging as the most popular destination for relocating City banks.
Photograph: Design Pics Inc / Rex Features

Dublin is streets ahead of EU rivals as City firms plan for Brexit relocation


Its shared language and links with London have made the Irish capital first choice for banks seeking new bases from which to trade in Europe

In boardrooms across London, bank executives are deciding where to move tens of thousands of jobs in the event of a hard Brexit. Rival European financial centres, including Paris, Frankfurt and Luxembourg, are vying for the business – but Dublin is emerging as the most popular destination.

Hundreds of banks, insurers, fund managers and other major City firms had until Friday to tell the Bank of England how they intend to cope in the event of a hard Brexit.

Accountants at EY last week said 59 out of the 222 biggest financial services companies in the UK have made public statements about moving staff from Britain to the EU because of Brexit. Dublin, which is still scarred by Ireland’s financial crisis, is the top destination with 19 firms mentioning a possible move to the Irish capital.

Jes Staley, the chief executive of Barclays, which already has significant operations in Ireland, flew there last week to meet taoiseach Leo Varadkar and discuss further expansion across the Irish Sea. “Barclays Bank Ireland, which has a banking licence and which we have operated for almost 40 years, provides a natural base and we are engaging with our regulators in discussions to extend its activities,” the bank said.

A week earlier, JP Morgan’s chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon was also in Varadkar’s office discussing the American bank’s expansion in Dublin. The bank, which currently employs 500 staff in Ireland, has bought a new office building in Dublin’s docklands area that can accommodate up to 1,000 people. “Given the momentum of our local businesses, this new building gives us room to grow and some flexibility within the European Union,” Carin Bryans, JP Morgan’s boss in Ireland, has said.

Frankfurt appears to be the second most popular destination, with 18 mentions in EY’s research. Luxembourg, with a population of just 110,000, comes third with 11.

Paris, which last week promised bankers significant tax cuts as part of a major charm offensive by new French prime minister Manuel Valls, was ranked in fourth place.

Banks and other financial services companies are looking to move parts of their business to new continental homes because they are worried Brexit could mean they will lose their “EU passport”, a legal mechanism that permits them to do business in other EU countries from the UK. Xavier Rolet, the boss of the London Stock Exchange, has said that Brexit could lead to as many as 100,000 jobs moving out of London.

“The difference three months on from the triggering of article 50 is that we are seeing major financial brands put their contingency plans into action – over a quarter of the companies we track have suggested there will be potential changes to their London base as a result of Brexit,” said Omar Ali, EY’s UK financial services leader. “This process will only accelerate as firms finalise their submissions to the regulators on their Brexit plans.”

So what is it that makes Dublin, a city with a population of 1.4 million and a chronic housing shortage, no international schools and a stained history in banking so attractive?

Although Frankfurt has already secured the EU bases of Japanese banks Nomura and Daiwa, Dublin appears to be a favourite for many City companies because of its historic links with London and the common language.

“Dublin already has some of the back-office operations for some large investment banks and an asset management presence; it also has the benefit of being pretty close to London and of being English-speaking,” Ali, who compiled the EY report, said. “It’s very hard to tell how many people will actually move. However, it’s clear that EU operations will need to be proper functioning entities and not just letterboxes.”

Any boost to the financial services industry will be welcomed in a city still recovering from the banking crisis and property price crash a decade ago. The collapse of the economy went deeper than the UK, with house prices slashed by up to 70% and taxpayers left on the hook for toxic banking debt guaranteed by the state, which in turn was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

However, while the public is still nursing debts and negative equity, the IMF bailout seems a very distant memory in Ireland. The economy is on course to be the fastest growing in the eurozone for the fourth year in a row and there is a housing shortage for a growing population.

Depicting the Brexit crisis as “a tennis match between Dublin and Frankfurt trivialises it”, said Kieran Donoghue, head of international financial services at Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority, the semi-state body charged with winning foreign investment.

“Brexit is not of the industry’s making. Banks and financial services don’t have a choice but to respond to it and they are reaching out because customers want to know ‘will you be able to finance my manufacturing plant in Germany in two years’ time?’; ‘will you be able to provide working capital?’; ‘will the pensions services be the same?’,” he said. “People don’t want that relationship that they have had for years and years broken because of Brexit.”

Donoghue said that he believed that more than a dozen banks would ultimately make a partial move to Dublin from London, relocating or hiring anything from 10 to 500 staff apiece.

“It’s a beautiful city, with great real estate and an open business climate,” Dimon told existing JP Morgan employees in Dublin at a staff meeting. “I’m optimistic about our future growth here.”

Last week, US specialist insurer Beazley said it was bulking up its presence, in the city while others considering the move include investment bank Investec and Citigroup, which already has a major operation there. Citi is expected to announce later this month how it will handle Brexit.

“It is not that London is going to decamp en masse to Dublin or anywhere else, the industry is going to move to a more decentralised structure with hubs in several locations,” said Donoghue.

Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, has said that Brexit could lead to as many as 100,000 jobs moving out of London.

Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, has said that Brexit could lead to as many as 100,000 jobs moving out of London. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP

Ken Owens, Brexit partner at PwC, said he had between 20 and 30 clients who have said they were going to move to the Irish capital. “A lot of them will start quite small and move 10 to 15 senior managers and slowly expand,” he said.

Owens added that clients found the city attractive because “you don’t have to mess around with tax rulings”, allowing straightforward Brexit calculations. “The corporate rate is 12.5% and that’s what it stays at; that’s what you pay. Ireland is very transparent, unlike some other countries. The rate is competitive and that’s helping.”

Another big issue for firms doing the tour of Europe is employment law in Germany and bonus caps and pay restrictions in the Netherlands, according to Owens. As for Paris: “As a location? It’s not coming up.”

The Irish banking crisis was largely self-inflicted with over-lending by a handful of now-bust domestic banks and light regulation now replaced by “an awful lot of prudence and an awful lot of caution” by banks and regulators, Donoghue said.

The crash still casts a long shadow. The housing shortage is at crisis levels, with the most recent figures showing there were just 3,500 properties to let in the entire country and just 2,800 properties for sale in Dublin, according to Marian Finnegan, chief economist at estate agent Sherry Fitzgerald.

“This is a market in recovery and, if everyone arrived on one day, it would be a problem,” she said. “We do have a crisis in the residential sector.”

She estimated that there were only “a couple of hundred” high-end new homes available for incoming high-rollers, including some €5m-plus penthouses at Landsdowne Place, in the shadow of the Aviva rugby stadium.

The apartment block is emblematic of Ireland’s ability to move on from its past. It is being built on the site of two hotels in the city’s Ballsbridge area bought in the boom years by a now bankrupt builder for €400m and sold on by Ulster Bank to Chartered Land and the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund for €170m.

In contrast to London, where prices continued to go up and up after the crash, prices in Dublin are still 30-35% off their peak. On the commercial front, the situation is different, with 335,000 square feet under construction, and just 27% pre-let and 11% reserved.

Tim Payne, head of people and change at accountancy firm KPMG, said picking another city to move to may be the easy part compared with the “tough sell” of convincing London staff, and their families, to move.

Indeed, HSBC is struggling even to convince enough of its staff to make the 120-mile move from London’s Docklands to the bank’s new British headquarters in Birmingham, despite offering rewards of up to £2,500.

Meanwhile, fears that Dublin would go down the ranks of European cities because of the lack of schools have been assuaged after Nord Anglia International announced it was opening a school in September 2018 and would offer the international baccalaureate curriculum. It has yet to start enrolling pupils but has already taken more than 400 enquiries.

JP Morgan’s Dimon has played down the idea of one location inside the EU benefiting from the fallout of Brexit but he warned that could change as 75% of the activity JP Morgan conducts in the UK was for EU companies.

“If the EU determines over time that it wants to move a lot more jobs out of London into the EU, it can simply dictate that,” he said.

“The regulators can dictate it, the politicians can dictate it.”

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Many pot firms strapped with cash

LOS ANGELES — Slip a fresh $20 bill under the bulletproof teller window of Donnie Anderson’s Medex marijuana dispensary — perhaps for a gram of cannabis or some THC-infused toffees — and the legal tender is transformed into something else: drug money.

Though the transaction is legal in California, under federal law that bill is not much different from the contents of a drug cartel’s safe — cash that most banks won’t touch.

So how is Anderson supposed to pay his employees, suppliers or business taxes? He deposits cash, in drips and drabs, into an account held by a limited liability company that his bank thinks is a property management firm.

“The bank doesn’t know what we do,” he said.

If this sounds like money laundering, you’re not far off.

Yet consider this: That same $20 exchanged at Canndescent, another cannabis company, takes a direct and transparent route into the financial system.

When the marijuana cultivator sells its product to a dispensary, one armored car drops off the pot and another picks up the cash payment — and then heads to a downtown Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.

There the cash is deposited into the account of a local credit union, one that’s eager to do business with Canndescent.

“After all the horror stories I’ve heard, it does seem like a little bit of magic,” said Tom DiGiovanni, Canndescent’s chief financial officer.

Indeed, though the same laws apply to Anderson’s dispensary and Canndescent’s farm, the world of cannabis banking is so full of contradictions that one business can truck money to a federal facility while the other is left to play a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek with its cash.

“It’s the early stages of the Wild West,” said California Treasurer John Chiang, who is leading an effort to reform cannabis banking, a problem dating back to 1996 when California legalized medical marijuana.

With recreational use set to become legal next year under Proposition 64, cannabis sales in the state are expected to top $7.5 billion in 2020, up from about $3.3 billion last year, according to data provider New Frontier and cannabis investor network Arcview Group.

But while Proposition 64 broadened the legal use of pot, it did nothing to relax banking regulations.

“It left significant questions unresolved,” Chiang said. “How do you handle the taxation of cannabis dollars and the banking of billions of dollars of transactions that are going to take place here in California?”

Last year, Chiang created a group of cannabis and banking industry trade groups, attorneys, regulators and others, trying to figure out how to bring the cannabis industry into the financial mainstream. But it’s a vexing challenge, and one that cannot be solved by the state alone.

Marijuana is legal for medical use in 29 states and for recreational use in eight, yet the federal Controlled Substances Act lists it alongside heroin and LSD as both dangerous and having no accepted medical use.

And for banks, federal laws are paramount.

Banks and credit unions can guarantee deposits because they have federal deposit insurance. They rely on Federal Reserve systems to make wire transfers, handle electronic payments and process checks. And they all answer to at least one federal regulator.

Banks and credit unions also are required to tell federal authorities if they suspect that their customers might be engaged in illegal activity. And when it comes to following those rules, the stakes are high.

“The FDIC could step in and shut down a bank, and it can do that with very little notice,” said Julie Hill, a law professor at the University of Alabama and former finance industry attorney who has studied cannabis banking. “Nobody’s ever gotten their bank brought back to life after it’s been closed by regulators.”

Because of that, many banks won’t even take the risk.

“From a federal level, it’s illegal,” Jim Brush, chief executive of Summit State Bank in Santa Rosa, Calif., told Chiang’s working group in May. “It really doesn’t matter what California does.”

Still, federal officials have cracked open the door for banks and credit unions.

In 2013, the Justice Department said it would focus its marijuana-enforcement efforts on preventing sales to minors, interstate trafficking and a handful of other crimes.

The following year, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, part of the U.S. Treasury Department, released guidelines for financial institutions that want to work with marijuana companies. They require additional reporting and demand that banks monitor companies for activities that remain Justice Department priorities.

No clear protections

FinCEN reported that 368 banks and credit unions were serving the industry in March, up from fewer than 300 at the beginning of 2016. But that’s a tiny fraction of the nation’s nearly 12,000 banks and credit unions.

Hill said so few institutions are playing along because FinCEN’s guidelines don’t offer clear legal protection. And some banks don’t want to be in the uncomfortable position of policing cannabis companies.

“How would you know a business isn’t selling to minors unless you’re in the store all the time?” Hill said.

What’s more, with a new administration in the White House and avowed marijuana opponent Jeff Sessions running the Justice Department, it’s not clear whether the feds will take a harder line on pot.

With many cannabis companies unable to get bank accounts, they are often left to deal in cash, which is inconvenient and dangerous.

Take Jerred Kiloh, owner of Higher Path Collective. His Los Angeles dispensary had sales of about $4 million last year, so he owed more than $200,000 in taxes to Los Angeles alone, he told Chiang’s group.

Imagine, Kiloh said, carrying that much cash.

“Right now, at the downtown office of finance, there’s a six-story parking structure 500 yards away,” he said. “I have to walk through what is essentially a homeless encampment with a duffel bag full of cash, walk across the street, go through security and then sometimes stand in line.”

Kyle Kazan, a former area police officer who runs a firm that invests in cannabis growers and retailers, said the lack of access to banking poses big safety risks.

“Real lives are in danger because there’s so much cash in play here,” Kazan said.


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Law firms expand patent, trademark expertise to handle IP growth

Boulder and the Front Range of Colorado’s entrepreneurial and innovative spirit has fueled growth in intellectual-property law, as startups and existing companies work to bring new products and ideas to market.

Many existing Colorado law firms have expanded their intellectual-property practices in the past couple of years, and many others are starting IP practices here, said Joel Sayres, a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels LLP who splits his time between the Denver and Boulder offices.

“It’s just a reflection overall of Front Range growth, particularly in market segments like bioscience, clean energy, technology and advanced manufacturing,” he said.

Boulder and the Front Range has a growing population and educated young workforce, and is an overall desirable place to live, he adds. Add to that a “comparatively favorable business environment, low unemployment and a thriving startup community” and the area is ripe for intellectual-property services.

“All that leads to a sense that it will continue to grow and be an important geographic segment in the future,” Sayres said.

Boulder offers a lot of support for startups. Silicon Flatirons, a program out of the University of Colorado Boulder that started in 1999, has helped spur innovation in the area. It provides support and education around entrepreneurship, tech policy and the law. The mission of Silicon Flatirons is to elevate the debate surrounding technology policy issues; support and enable entrepreneurship in the technology community; and inspire prepare, and place students in these important areas.

“I think Silicon Flatirons, coupled with a lot of positive resources for startups, has made Boulder a focal area,” said Sayres, but he still sees many tech startups moving to Denver.

“Both are burgeoning scenes for startups and technology,” he added.

Boulder and the Front Range have 12 incubators and accelerators that help Colorado startups find and take advantage of the resources they need, including Techstars, BoomTown and Innosphere.

Faegre Baker Daniels brought on three IP partners in the past year, as well as a biopharma associate.

“Like a lot of firms, we are always looking for the right complement for our IP practice. We are always interested in the right growth,” he said.

Patent law is the firm’s biggest practice area, both patent litigation and prosecution, but there is also a fair amount of trademark and copyright work for startup companies and companies that depend on having a strong brand. Trade secrets are an expanding area of IP law.

“I think people are starting to see a lot of benefits and potential for IP in Denver and Boulder,” Sayres said.

Jim Brogan, a partner and head of Cooley LLP’s IP practice in Colorado, doesn’t describe the increase in need for intellectual property services as a boom, especially because the industry has seen a fairly significant decrease in the number of patent lawsuits that have been filed across the country. But as Colorado’s technology community continues to grow, especially the software and hardware sides, and biosciences, “we’re really well-positioned long term for tech growth on all fronts,” he said.

“What we’ve seen in the bulk of our office regions around the country is movement of the tech folks toward the cities,” Brogan said.

Many of those companies are gravitating toward San Francisco and Denver.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t have stuff in Boulder and the corridor, but we are seeing more activity downtown,” he said.

Cooley is doing a lot more prosecution and counseling. It has 12 lawyers and the accompanying paralegals.

“It has been more a period of transition and flux than growth, so to speak,” Brogan said. “In our market, we have seen growth in bandwidth and bodies coming here. We have a terrific talent base in Colorado. It is a great place to live. You can project yourself all over the place, given our airport facilities. It helped us getting a local patent office. It was a shot in the arm for local practitioners to do more things here.”

He points out that Colorado just hosted the 15th Annual Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property & Technology Law Institute the first week of June. When that event first started 15 years ago, it was held in the conference room of the Denver Bar Association, he said. This year’s event had 620 people attending. That growth was driven by smaller intellectual-property shops specializing in counseling, trademark and copyright stuff, he said.

Giovanni Ruscitti, managing partner at Berg Hill Greenleaf & Ruscitti LLP in Boulder, said his firm has always had an intellectual-property practice, but it has made a concerted effort to bring in patent-prosecution attorneys and to really “take our IP practice to a different level to better serve Boulder County businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators. It’s actually been a large growth area for us and one we are very excited about.”

The company brought in two new partners and some additional support staff in the form of patent agents, additional associates and paralegals. The company has six attorneys that work on patent prosecution, patent infringement, trademarks, copyrights and trade-secret protection.

Berg Hill Greenleaf & Ruscitti is one of Boulder’s largest law firms, driven by the burgeoning market in Boulder and the surrounding areas as opposed to the market in Denver, Ruscitti said.

“There’s a lot of energy in the innovative space in Boulder; a lot of great organizations, large and small, a lot happening, and I expect that to continue,” he said. “The Front Range has really changed. Longmont has seen significant growth. Fort Collins has seen growth.”

Ruscitti’s firm has seen large growth in patents over the past six months.

“We have seen a lot of activity in that area. Having the University of Colorado in our backyard, having the national labs, Ball Aerospace and Lockheed in our backyard creates a lot of energy in this area. It brings in a lot of very talented people,” he said.

According to the Boulder Economic Council, Boulder has a diverse mix of industries that drive local, national and global economies, including a high concentration of employment in aerospace, bioscience, clean tech, IT/software, natural products and outdoor recreation. Boulder is also home to one of the state’s largest research universities, the University of Colorado Boulder, and more than a dozen federal research laboratories, including the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  All of these help fuel growth in the IP space.

Its well-educated workforce is a big driver in the number and types of companies that move to Boulder County. In its latest Market Profile for Boulder, the Boulder Economic Council shows that the median age in the city of Boulder is 29 and that “nearly all city residents age 25 or older have a high school diploma or higher (95.8%), and just under three-quarters of the population (73%) have earned a bachelor’s or advanced degree. This is more than double the U.S. average of 30.6%.”

Most of the 6,526 private employers in the city of Boulder are small businesses, according to the Boulder Economic Council. Nearly 80 percent have fewer than 10 employees, and about 96 percent have fewer than 50 employees.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opened a satellite office in Denver in June 2014, which has “been a great resource for both attorneys and entrepreneurs and inventors here,” Sayres said. The office has not been a “primary driver of firms’ expansion, but it certainly helps.”

He adds that there is not a lot of awareness on the west or east coasts about how quickly the innovation economy is growing in Denver and Boulder.

“I think the PTO has helped confirm Denver and Boulder’s place on the map,” Sayres said.

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2 Wisconsin personal injury law firms merge

The Wisconsin law firms of Gingras, Cates & Luebke and Richie, Wickstrom & Wachs have merged.

A combined venture of Gingras, Cates & Wachs will have law offices in Madison, Eau Claire and Waukesha. The firm focuses on personal injury, insurance misconduct, professional malpractice and employment law, while employing 12 attorneys and about 20 other legal professionals.

“As our firm and the reach of our clients have grown over the years, it makes sense to continue this growth with another firm that has the same philosophies, reputation and successful outcomes as ours,” attorney Beverly Wickstrom said in a statement.

Mark Thomsen, a Milwaukee attorney and chairman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has also joined the merged business, the company said.

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No action against lawyers, law firms for GST non-compliance, rules Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court has directed the Centre not to take any coercive steps against lawyers and law firms for not registering or complying with the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) Act or the Delhi Goods and Services Tax (DGST) Act, till a clarification is issued by the appropriate governments.

The bench comprising Justice Muralidhar and Justice Pratibha M Singh also asked the Centre to clarify whether services of lawyers and law firms come under the GST, after concluding that there exists no clarity on whether all legal services would be governed by the reverse charge mechanism. The orders were passed on a petition by J K Mittal, owner of a Delhi-based law firm, seeking the quashing of notifications issued by the Centre and Delhi governments according to which GST is to be paid by advocates and law firms on all services offered by them, apart from representing clients in courts and tribunals.

The high court passed the directions after concluding there was prima facie merit that lawyers and law firms were faced with a genuine doubt regarding the legal requirement for registration under the new tax regime. The bench also said that if all legal services were to be governed under the reverse charge mechanism, there would be no purpose in getting registered under the CGST, IGST and DGST Act. In such a case, those seeking voluntary registration could anyway avail the facility under Section 25 of the CGST Act and the corresponding provisions of the other two laws.

The petitioner has claimed that for representational services, the client (receiver of the service) will have to pay GST as per the relevant notifications and also alleges that the Centre and Delhi governments have failed to follow the GST Council recommendation that lawyers and law firms should be exempt from registration requirements. The petition also says that the government notifications are not in consonance with the CGST, IGST and DGST Acts and Article 279A of the Constitution and will have a negative impact on the legal sector. It also questions the need to re-register a legal professional who has already been registered under the Finance Act of 2011 and asks for these lawyers to be exempted from such requirements.

The matter has been posted for further hearing on July 18.

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Pound boosts earnings at big London law firms

Focusing outside of Europe and cutting costs are a way for London-based firms to continue increasing profit per equity partner

LONDON

A year after the UK voted to leave the European Union, London’s biggest law firms are benefiting from the weaker pound as they hunt for growth overseas.

While lawyers are finding it hard to raise hourly rates, they’re getting a boost from the 15 per cent decline in the UK currency after the Brexit referendum in June 2016. Allen & Overy said almost three-quarters of its revenue came from issues involving two or more countries, while a 23 per cent increase in Asian sales made the region Clifford Chance’s fastest-growing area.

The British market is facing uncertainty because of the Brexit vote, and legal firms have faced a slowdown in some practice areas as clients put off spending until negotiations reveal clearer outcomes. Tony Williams at legal consultant Jomati said non-U. K. work and cost cutting is helping keep profits improving in “broadly flat” markets in the West.

“We live in uncertain times but that is exactly when the best lawyers show their worth,” Williams said. “While Brexit has caused uncertainty the fall of sterling will produce plenty of opportunities.”

The pound helped boost profit at Allen & Overy, which benefited from a one-time foreign exchange gain of 48.2 million pounds ($62.4 million), and revenue rose to 1.52 billion pounds. At Linklaters, foreign exchange effects pushed the firm to 1.44 billion pounds, an increase of 9.8 per cent with the currency moves. The figure was 1.7 per cent once exchange rate effects are removed.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said revenue rose to 1.33 billion pounds, and Clifford Chance posted the highest sales of the four, with 1.54 billion pounds for the year.

The U.K.’s largest law firms set out an internationalist agenda from the 1990s as their client base shifted from traditional UK blue-chip companies to foreign investment banks and emerging markets. Allen & Overy currently have 44 offices in 31 countries while Clifford Chance has 33 in 23 different countries.

Brexit Questions

Firms are using overseas work to hedge some of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

“Our international network is in 31 countries and gives us a certain resilience to business cycles in different markets,” said Andrew Ballheimer, global managing partner at Allen & Overy, said.

Law firms got used to double-digit revenue and profit growth in the 1980s and 1990s, Williams said, rates that aren’t sustainable in the current “much more mature, much more competitive market.” Allen & Overy say its hourly rates have “not materially increased” so profit is growing through cost controls.

Focusing outside of Europe and cutting costs are a way for London-based firms to continue increasing profit per equity partner. Freshfields’s PEP increased 5 per cent to 1.55 million pounds, while Linklaters’ figure rose 7.8 per cent to 1.57 million pounds. Clifford Chance saw its PEP rise to 1.38 million pounds, and Allen & Overy said its profit per equity partner increased by 26 per cent to 1.51 million pounds.

Opportunities

The firms’ advisory businesses have picked up as clients prepare for multiple Brexit scenarios. Gideon Moore, managing partner of Linklaters, said its regulatory group is “busy, not just giving advice around Brexit, but the whole world is becoming more regulated.” Andrew Ballheimer said Allen & Overy clients are “increasingly looking for guidance on how best to prepare for Brexit.”

After some initial hiccups, merger and acquisitions activity still looks positive. Allen and Overy reported a nine-year high for western Europe in the first half of the year. Business was “pretty much back to normal in September after two dud months” following June 2016’s referendum, according to Williams.

However, Williams said that having two months with little activity still makes it difficult to catch up on annual targets, however well a firm does in the rest of the year. He said that business from abroad was lured by lower exchange rates, which meant that “quality British assets could be purchased for 15 per cent less than a few months before”.

Law firms may suffer if Brexit draws some international clients away from London, but UK businesses are waiting for negotiations to yield more details on how businesses will interact with the EU before deciding on spending.

Britain is “second guessing as to the implications it will have for businesses in and around the UK and Europe,” Linklaters’s Gideon Moore said.

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