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ICC
set to produce legal guide to global sourcing
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| Global sourcing
- a rapidly growing business practice |
Paris,
13 September 2004
- More than 30 business and legal experts from around the world met in
Paris today to discuss how to help businesses cope with the problems of
global sourcing.
The Paris-based International
Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has put together a task force to provide a comprehensive
legal guide to global sourcing transactions.
At its inaugural meeting,
Michael Hancock, a partner of the international law firm Salans and chair
of the Task Force on Global Sourcing Contracts, explained why the new
work group had been launched.
"Global sourcing
enables a company to transfer non-core activities to third party suppliers,"
he said. "It is a rapidly growing business practice which, implemented
properly, can improve a company's competitiveness and increase economic
growth across borders."
"However, many
businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises and companies
from emerging markets, have indicated to ICC that they lack the necessary
legal know-how to evaluate whether global sourcing is appropriate to their
business."
At today's meeting
the task force took the first steps towards producing a legal guide on
global sourcing which it hopes will respond to this need.
Li Ying, a Beijing-based
executive at ICC China and a member of the new task force, underlined
the importance of the new initiative for Chinese companies.
"China is a key
player in global sourcing,
and this ICC project will provide Chinese companies
looking to act as either client or supplier in a global sourcing transaction
with much needed guidance on how to deal with the legal issues that may
arise when negotiating cross-border contracts."
After the meeting,
Anthony Tabor, Senior Solicitor at Vodafone said: "There is a real
need for legal guidance on global sourcing and ICC, with its history of
trade tools such as Incoterms and model contracts, should be well-placed
to fill this gap."
The task force will
meet again on 15 November 2004 in Paris, the day before the biannual meeting
of the ICC Commission on Commercial Law and Practice (CLP). In addition
to global sourcing, topics on the commission's agenda include electronic
contracting, international legal harmonization, trademark licensing, turnkey
transactions, UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT and jurisdiction and applicable law issues.
For further information
or interviews contact Jonas Astrup, ICC Policy Manager, Click here to send a mail
+33 1 49 53 28 26.
Commission
on Commercial Law and Practice
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