Davina Garrod and Jasper Helder Discuss Brexit and New EU Privacy Rules with MCC

Akin Gump international trade partners Davina Garrod and Jasper Helder are featured in the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel article “Preparing for Big Changes,” which looks at the impact of the coming implementation of Brexit and the rollout of the European Union (EU)’s General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR).

Garrod noted that formal exit negotiations between the EU and the United Kingdom have not yet begun and probably will not start until after Germany’s general election in September. Those talks, she said will likely include “money, a plan for how to sensibly address the border issues between Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) and the Republic of Ireland (a separate and remaining EU member state) and protections for EU citizens who will be living in the U.K.”

Helder addressed the issue of how companies can prepare for the U.K.’s departure from the EU, suggesting that those with business operations on both sides of the English Channel start by looking at their supply chains. This includes where products are being sourced from globally and where production facilities are located.

Turning to Brexit’s impact on corporate M&A and other transactions in the U.K., Garrod said, “Once the U.K. comes out of the EU, then all deals involving U.K. companies will need to be considered from a U.K. merger control perspective as well as from an EU merger control perspective.” She also pointed out that the U.K. government “is re-thinking its industrial strategy and whether further scrutiny should be applied to foreign acquirers of strategic U.K. assets.”

Garrod then discussed the impact of the GPDR, which is indented to strengthen privacy laws, advising U.S. companies to “set individual milestones for compliance and agree on the timing of essential deliverables.” Those entities, she said, will also need “to determine the legal basis for each type of data processing activity” they do and document all of them.

For more of the interview with Garrod and Helder, please click here.