Solicitors in Swansea.

There have been some very interesting pieces in the legal and general press this week about the employment law rights of the staff of the demised News Of the World. Legal commentators have suggested not only that there may be obvious claims for unfair dismissal but also that employees who struggle to find new roles might claim that this is due to guilt by association and form a claim for breach of contract. Whilst unlikely to be a factor to an organisation as wealthy as News International, it seems that the company is making efforts already to re-engage some staff, although this in itself can cause employment law problems, as the criteria for re-engaging one person and not another may well be looked at in any Tribunal cases. Hopefully, the criteria to be adopted will not include hacking skills !

Controversial ‘prepack’ deals under which insolvent companies are sold back to their own management, free of debt, face a legal crackdown.

Prepack administrations and insolvencies have caused a great deal of controversy. Certainly, they leave a very bitter taste in the mouth for creditors for very understandable reasons. The main ones are :-

• Creditors may lose out
• The previous owners of the business are often directly or indirectly involved with starting again without debts
• Businesses that behave properly and run their businesses prudently face unfair competition from the new entity set up free of debt

Plans for legal changes are only at an early stage but are likely to involve some forewarning being required of the prepack solution to creditors and perhaps others. As things stand, creditors get even more infuriated by the fact they only find out what has happened i.e the prepack has happened, when there is little they can do about it practically.

Pay by phone the next evolution in mobile technology – it’s here

The success of the Oyster card system for London Transport is being replicated so that payment can be made by a contact point on a mobile phone, and for use in a myriad of different shops. Orange are the first mobile company to roll out the ‘Quick Tap’ system. Other points to note in relation to this are :-

• customers can make purchases of up to £15.00
• 50,000 shops nationwide have already agreed to accept payments this way, including Eat, Little Chef  and McDonald’s
• The system currently only works on the Orange system and on one phone, the Samsung Tocco Quick Tap
• up to £100.00 a time needs to be first transferred to the mobile phone account.

FSA to provide more public information

It can only have increased the public’s ire about bankers and the so-called fat cat culture that there has also appeared to be a lack of transparency as to what went wrong in addition to a perceived lack of accountability.

The incumbent head of our  top financial regulator, Hactor Sants, seems to be aware of this dynamic and has promised to publish full reports into future bank collapses. Whilst the public will ultimately be more concerned about avoidance of a future bank failure and accountability of senior figures, this new commitment to transparency is clearly welcome news.