Asian Legal Review

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will use the senior managers and certification regime (SMCR) to hold financial firms to account for sexual harassment, according to one of its directors.

The Upper Tribunal has upheld the Pensions Regulator’s (TPR) use of its powers to seek financial support from ITV for members of a defined benefit (DB) pension scheme attached to the now defunct Box Clever TV rental business.

An independent Scotland should retain the pound sterling as its currency until such time as the economy can meet performance tests which would allow for the creation of an independent Scottish currency, according to a new report.

A legal challenge to the mayor of London’s affordable housing guidance brought by a group of retirement housing developers has been partially upheld by the High Court.

Indonesia’s parliament approved on Friday tougher anti-terrorism laws as it seeks to combat a surge in home-grown Islamist militancy, days after suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State killed more than 30 people in the city of Surabaya.
Revising a 2003 law became a top priority for the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country after the Surabaya attacks, the deadliest in Indonesia in nearly two decades.
The revised law allows police to preemptively detain suspects for longer and…

The announcement by US President Donald Trump that he has called off planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on June 12 has been received with, alternately, confusion, horror and admiration both within the US and abroad.
Trump said in an open letter on Thursday that the “tremendous anger and hostility” expressed by North Korea in recent days had caused him to scuttle the talks, which were to have taken place in Singapore. He later said in a statement that their…

Cloud computing, e-commerce, accounting software and customer relationship management software are among the seven “best practice technologies” the UK government has identified to have potential to boost business productivity.

An Australian grandmother who said she was tricked into carrying drugs into Malaysia after falling for an online romance scam was on Thursday sentenced to death after an earlier acquittal was overturned, her lawyer said.
Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto was arrested in December 2014 while in transit at Kuala Lumpur airport with 1.1 kilos (2.4 pounds) of crystal methamphetamine stitched into the compartment of a backpack she was carrying.
The 54-year-old was cleared in December of trafficking after a…

Hundreds of people attended the funeral Wednesday of a Pakistani exchange student who was killed in the shooting at a Texas high school last week.
Sabika Sheikh, 17, died with seven other students and two teachers when a 17-year-old student opened fire at Santa Fe High School on Friday.
Dimitrios Pagourtzis was arrested and charged with capital murder and aggravated assault of a peace officer. He admitted to the shootings and told officers he targeted students he didn’t like, according to…

A Malaysian sovereign wealth fund at the centre of a major scandal that helped to topple the former government is insolvent and its chief is “utterly dishonest”, the new finance minister said Wednesday.
Ousted leader Najib Razak, his family and cronies are accused of looting billions of dollars from the fund, 1MDB, in a sophisticated fraud that stretched from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland.
Najib and 1MDB, which is the subject of money-laundering investigations in several…