Anna Sharpe co-pre­sent­ed to the Mer­i­tas’ M+A & Pri­vate Equi­ty Group on ​‘Data Privacy’.

Yao Rao gave an update on recent changes to data and pri­va­cy laws in Chi­na and not­ed that pro­hi­bi­tions on some data flows to coun­tries out­side Chi­na have recent­ly been eased. Jef­frey Lim made some inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about the bal­ance Singapore’s pri­va­cy laws achieves between indi­vid­u­als’ pri­va­cy rights on the one hand, and posi­tion­ing Sin­ga­pore as an attrac­tive hub for region­al invest­ment in the Asia-Pacif­ic on the other.

Anna cov­ered the con­tentious top­ic of when the Aus­tralian Pri­va­cy Act impos­es oblig­a­tions on com­pa­nies who have lim­it­ed cor­po­rate or IT pres­ence in Aus­tralia. She also spoke about when Aus­tralian com­pa­nies may be liable for the pri­va­cy breach­es of ex-Aus­tralian data recip­i­ents (for exam­ple off­shore cloud ser­vice providers). The issue of what is need­ed for there to be a valid opt-in (con­sent) was out­lined and also gen­er­al­ly what Pri­va­cy Act com­pli­ance involves