Your commercial news round-up: GDPR, Insurtech Marshmallow, PayPal, Boeing lawsuit
updated on 09 September 2021
Summer’s over, it’s back to law school. What better way to begin the autumn term than LCN’s latest commercial news round-up. This week we look at:
- why Britain plans to ditch the GDPR post-Brexit;
- who the latest unicorn founders are in the tech scene;
- which services PayPal is venturing into; and
- why Boeing directors are facing a lawsuit.
Get ahead today by reading our short summaries of this week’s top stories below.
- Britain plans to move away from European data protection regulations after Brexit, the government has announced. After Brexit, the UK is no longer regulated domestically by the EU’s GDPR, which governs the processing of personal data from individuals. However, Culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, said the move could lead to irritating cookie popups and consent requests online. The GDPR, which was introduced in 2018, has been criticised by many for its over-reliance on consent-based permissions and minimal citizen protection.
- Marshmallow’s Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham have become the UK’s second Black unicorn founders. Marshmallow is a car insurance start-up, founded by identical twin brothers in their 20s. The Londoners raised £62 million in their Series B funding round from tech investors including Monzo. Launched in just 2016, the company has already raised more than £87 million since and has 100,000 users (and counting!). The start-up offers cash plans to customers that have low credit scores (eg, young drivers) who have been turned away from traditional providers. WorldRemit was the first Britain unicorn created by Black founders.
- US PayPal has announced plans to acquire Paidy, a Japanese ‘buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm for $2.7 billion. BNPL services have grown rapidly during the pandemic due to their popularity among online merchants and shoppers. BNPL services such as Klarna, Clearpay and Laybuy offer customers flexible payment methods for online and in-store purchases. PayPal hopes to “expand PayPal’s capabilities, distribution and relevance in the domestic payments market in Japan”, according to Thomson Reuters.
- In breaking travel news, Boeing’s board of directors are facing a lawsuit from shareholders over two fatal crashes involving its 737 Max plane. The two crashes killed 346 people in less than six months. The plane was cleared to fly again late last year after being grounded since March 2019, but a US judge said the first crash was a “red flag” about a safety flaw on the aircraft. The judge ruled that the board “knowingly fell short” in “taking specific actions to monitor safety.”
Be sure to check the News every Thursday for this weekly commercial news round-up. Follow @LawCareersNetUK on Twitter and like us on Facebook for instant business news updates.
