Linklaters

Leading global customers and suppliers depend on the commercial and innovative advice of our team of specialist TMT lawyers across our global offices.

Our global TMT practice deals with all aspects of major commercial contracts, outsourcing and offshoring, information management compliance and data protection, e-business and IT security, telecoms, media and handles major TMT disputes. The team helps clients to achieve their commercial aims and also to develop strategies and programmes for managing legal and regulatory risk across multiple jurisdictions.

The firm was named TMT team of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2011 and is recognised as a leading practice by Chambers and Legal 500 across our international offices. A number of our partners and associates are also recognised as market leading advisors.

The team produces TMT News - a regular international newsletter on TMT-related issues, and speaks widely at conferences and seminars. In addition, Linklaters produces Data Protected - an annual comprehensive summary of European data protection legislation regimes in all EU member states and additional EEA territories, as well as reports on the level of enforcement activity and imposed sanctions. We have also recently updated our data protection e-learning course to help ensure our clients' employees are trained and have a strong understanding of data protection regulations. If you would like anymore information on this training tool, please contact a member of our Blue Flag team or click here.

• BP on its £1.5 billion IT outsourcing transaction with five major IT suppliers
• SWIFT on its negotiations with the Belgian DPA, banking regulator, state prosecutor and the European Commission on the disclosure of data to the US regulatory authorities.
• Hyatt Hotels on its binding corporate rules project which obtained approval from regulators for the sharing of guest and employee information in 47 countries. This was the fastest ever successful application of this type, the first such application to use the “mutual recognition process,” and the first by a large scale consumer business covering in excess of 1.3 million hotel guests. We have advised on three other successful BCR applications, many more than any other law firm.
• SES Astra on the establishment of the infrastructure for its German digital satellite platform
• Centrica on proceedings against Accenture for a £220 million contract dispute claim
• Monitise on its joint venture with Metavante to establish a mobile banking payments platform in the United States
• Vodafone on its U.S.$11.1 billion acquisition of Hutchison Essar, one of India’s three largest mobile operators
• J.P. Morgan on its high profile outsourcing deal by the Department of Work and Pensions and UK Post Office including the Post Office Card Accounts, affecting all UK state benefit recipients of more than 4 million people
• Citibank on the sale of its German retail banking business to Crédit Mutuel
• Telecom Italia on the sale of HanseNet to Telefónica for €900 million
• the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) on the contentious and high profile early ending of its contract with ETS Europe for the provision of national curriculum test operations
• Unisys in a dispute with the Belgian Ministry of Justice concerning the computerisation of the Belgian court system, after the ministry terminated the software agreement it held with Unisys
• China Netcom on its U.S.$23.8 billion merger with China Unicom by way of a scheme of arrangement
• Megafon, one of the largest Russian mobile operators, on the acquisition of one of Russia's leading alternative fixed-line long-distance operators
• Vodafone on an exclusivity cooperation agreement with the largest Russian mobile operator, MobileTeleSystems (MTS)
• ABBYY, an international software producer on the manufacture, import and registration of computer software and products in Russia