International Law

Harris Bricken attorney Jonathan Bench will be attending the HLB North American Advisory, Tax & Audit Conference next month in San Diego. He will be joined by Mike Criddle, Tax Partner at Eide Bailly LLP, to host two informative panel discussions.

The first panel, titled “When to Call the Lawyer: Legal Structuring and Litigation Support in International Transactions and Accounting,” will cover international transaction and dispute resolution issues. The second panel, titled “Legal Update for Cryptocurrency and Other Web3/Blockchain Transactions,” will cover tax and legal issues. Each panel will conclude with a Q&A. Learn about each panel below.

When to Call the Lawyer: Legal Structuring and Litigation Support in International Transactions 

Good international lawyers understand that clients receive the best possible outcomes when accountants and lawyers are both engaged early and working from the same general agenda. Unless a client’s business model is IP-heavy, the client will often engage

A while back (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid identifying anyone) a U.S. client company contacted our China lawyers about shutting down its China WFOE and/or terminating all of its roughly 47 China employees in one fell swoop. The U.S. company had discovered rampant corruption among its employees and its CEO wanted the WFOE excised “tomorrow.”

My response (put into one email and modified to hide any identifiers) was as follows, with the client identified below as “Company A.”

I spoke with one of our China employment lawyers and with our lead China corporate lawyer and both agree there is no way we can provide you with anything even approaching sound advice by tomorrow.

You essentially have two choices. One, you slink away in the middle of the night and neither Company A nor anyone who China might ever identify as having been associated with Company A ever

Recently I spoke with an entrepreneur in my hometown who is sourcing packaging in China for his startup. This post contains his questions and my answers, together with additional questions from a number of my prior speaking engagements.

What advice do you have regarding dealing with sourcing in China in the current environment?

Recognize Your Bargaining Power

The future will be rough, but that doesn’t mean the opportunities are gone. The law of supply and demand dictates that as demand in China wanes, an overzealous cohort of Chinese manufacturers will be vying for survival. They will be increasingly desperate to more than satisfy current customers and to ink deals with good prospective customers. You need to convince them that you are one of those companies.

These desperate suppliers will agree to contract terms that are more favorable to their customers. And they will be less likely to scuttle deals with

For the past many months, I have taken a few calls and meetings each week from web3 entrepreneurs and others involved in the blockchain industry, such as lawyers and accountants whose clients need special expertise. As a transactional attorney, I get a unique perspective on the blockchain industry because I am generally on the front end of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. I get to see and hear what is happening in the marketplace, often before ventures are publicly announced. Sometimes I get to hear about great ideas from around the world even before fingers have touched keyboards. This includes projects with players in China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Isn’t Crypto Dead?

For those following the web3 industry closely, you know that this crypto winter has been brutal from an entity and cryptocurrency valuation standpoint. But you also know that it is one of the best things to happen to the

PitchBook reports that even though 2022’s dry powder was lower than in either 2020 and 2021, a significant amount of capital has been deployed and remains to be deployed, including in deals involving Chinese companies and assets in China owned by U.S and non-Chinese companies. We know this because we are part of some of these deals, as companies and investors try to make sense of the China market and forecast the future there and in other promising markets.

An Overview of Venture Capital vs. Private Equity

In the venture capital and private equity space, “dry powder” means cash that has been committed by investors to a fund but that has not yet been called (transferred to) or deployed (invested) by the fund.

These funds are cyclical in nature, usually with a 5-7 year investment horizon before the fund’s assets are liquidated and a new fund is started. Successful VC