Business Law International (BLI)

Venture debt, a different funding alternative for startups, has positioned itself firmly in the venture business in the past few years, reaching high numbers in the US market by 2022, and more recently has begun to gain position in other markets, such as Latin America.

This type of financing seems counterintuitive at first, since the logic behind loan financing has not aligned traditionally with the high-risk profile and low cash flows of startups. This has led to burdensome requirements for its founders, who have had to back up the loans personally, but the empirical data seems to point towards a significant use and growth of this type of financing. This article looks at how venture debt works and why it works.

Read this article online     

The rise in popularity of generative artificial intelligence (‘generative AI’) has ignited the discussion on whether junior employees can be replaced by it. Some have gone to the extent of questioning whether professionals, such as lawyers, can also be replaced by generative AI. Is it wise to replace junior employees or lawyers with generative AI? What factors should be considered before deploying generative AI tools in your business? To consider these questions, we first need to understand the basic workings of generative AI and what it can offer.

Fundamentally, AI is intelligence that is not biological. The general understanding is that machines will be ascribed with this intelligence. These machines have the ability to interpret, learn from and process external data in a way that is similar to the capabilities of the human mind.

Generative AI is a type of AI program that generates content from a data set. It uses deep learning, a type of machine learning system that behaves like a neural network to simulate the functions of a human brain. In other words, it can mimic human intelligence by exhibiting analytical skills to create new content. Not only can generative AI be utilised in chatbot programs to create text, but it can also be used in programs that can create images, sound or videos. This article will consider two major forms of generative AI, in the context of risks to businesses: chatbots using generative pre-trained transformer technology programs; and image generating programs.

Read this article online     

The commitment of the European Commission (the ‘Commission’) to create a European space for all digital communications has resulted in a proliferation of legislation (actual and proposed) designed to deal with the many different issues raised by digital communications and services. The governance and enforcement provisions of each of these different pieces of legislation have produced a complex matrix of European Union (‘EU’) institutional arrangements, which reflects both the desire to achieve harmonised conditions of operation across the EU, while at the same time seeking to accommodate the desires of 27 Member States to retain some level of sovereignty over subject-matter as technical and as diverse as that presented in the digital environment.

The structuring of the relationships between Commission and Member State bodies or expert bodies, the ‘give and take’ between the institutional actors and the level of legal certainty that can be generated by such multi-player decision-making is likely to pose meaningful logistical and procedural challenges as the different elements of the Commission’s Digital Agenda package come into effect. To better understand the nature of those challenges, we analyse below the governance structures used in the key pillars of the Commission’s Digital Agenda and we seek to draw some preliminary conclusions on the effectiveness of those structures in delivering coherent enforcement on a pan-European level.

Read this article online     

The European Union (EU) is currently in the process of developing a comprehensive framework for taxing digital currencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum. This follows the growing popularity and use of cryptocurrencies, as well as the need for the EU to regulate and tax these digital assets in a consistent manner. The proposed framework is aimed at providing clarity for both individuals and businesses on how properly to report and pay taxes on their cryptocurrency transactions. It also aims to prevent tax evasion and money laundering through the use of cryptocurrencies.

Many believe that crypto assets have a crucial role to play in the evolution of the worldwide web into the so-called Web 3. The building blocks under speculation for the future internet are the metaverse, artificial intelligence, crypto assets and the other use of blockchain technology as well as the fifth-generation mobile network (5G).

The above-mentioned concepts may feel like the dream works of a future enthusiast, but all of them are decisively making their way into our lives. 5G networks have been available in big cities for years, Meta Platforms Inc alone has allegedly spent US$36bn in metaverse product development and McKinsey has predicted that by 2030 the value of the metaverse could reach US$5tn in value.

In this article, the authors aim to focus on giving a short description about what cryptocurrencies and other crypto assets are, how they are treated for tax purposes in the authors’ domicile jurisdiction (Finland) in comparison with some other jurisdictions and observe some international developments in crypto asset regulation and taxation.

Read this article online     

• Volume 24 Number 2, May 2023
• Volume 24 Number 1, January 2023
• Volume 23 Number 3, September 2022
• Volume 23 Number 2, May 2022
• Volume 23 Number 1, January 2022
• Volume 22 Number 3, September 2021
• Volume 22 Number 2, May 2021
• Volume 22 Number 1, January 2021
• Volume 21 Number 3, September 2020
• Volume 21 Number 2, May 2020
• Volume 21 Number 1, January 2020
• Volume 20 Number 3, September 2019
• Volume 20 Number 2, May 2019
• Volume 20 Number 1, January 2019