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Crystal ball gazing on the application of the B.C. Prompt Payment Act: A review with other provinces

British Columbia enacted the Construction Prompt Payment Act, SBC 2025, c 24 (the “Act”), which received Royal Assent on November 27, 2025. It will come into force on a date to be prescribed by regulation. The Act will apply to new contracts and subcontracts made after the legislation comes into force. Until the Act comes into force, there is much speculation of the application of the Act in the construction…

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The Practical NLRB Advisor: Summer 2026

Ogletree Deakins’ Traditional Labor Relations Practice Group is pleased to announce the publication of the Summer 2026 issue of the Practical NLRB Advisor. This issue discusses the latest news from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the wake of a year-long period that the five-member Board lacked the statutorily required three-member quorum due to unfilled vacancies. Even following this extended period when the Board did not have the authority…

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Responding to the creator economy

Disrupting the newsroom: How news creators are redefining media Download our latest report to explore how the creator economy is reshaping news and what it means for established media. Q5 Media Lead Katie Burridge and Q5 Media Sector Lead Graham Page examine the changing relationship between creators and institutions, and the strategic questions publishers and broadcasters need to consider next. Reading time: 4 minutes In September 2025, our report The…

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SEVP Ramps Up Scrutiny of Curricular Practical Training Authorizations

Quick Hits SEVP issued Broadcast Message 2608-01 on August 12, 2026, signaling heightened scrutiny of CPT authorizations that may not satisfy regulatory requirements. Broadcast Message 2608-02, issued August 24, 2026, provides additional Q&A guidance on when practical training is considered “integral” to an established curriculum. Both messages are directed at DSOs and SEVP-certified schools rather than employers, and they do not create new regulations or alter existing CPT requirements. On…

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A Relational Journey: You and We with Jim Ferrell

In this episode, Heidi Brooks talks with Jim Ferrell, who invites us to notice the invisible default of individualism that fragments our organizations and our lives. He describes a process for groups to map, measure, and manage the relational space—the “space between us”—for collective impact. Jim challenges us to see relationships fundamentally as the primary unit of analysis in work and life rather than the individual, arguing that everything we…

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Challenging the traditional consulting model

Our growth journey, specialist approach and perspective on the future of consulting  Our Co-Founder and Managing Partner Olly Purnell speaks to City AM about building Q5 as a challenger to traditional consulting, the shifts reshaping the industry and the opportunities ahead. The interview explores our growth, our specialist approach to organisational performance and Olly’s perspective on the impact of AI.    Reading time: 2 minutes  Our Co-Founder and Managing Partner…

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Executive Order Increases Scrutiny of Immigration-Tied Financial Activity

Quick Hits On June 5, 2026, FinCEN and several other federal agencies issued a joint advisory highlighting fraud typologies and suspicious activity linked to unlawful employment and employers, including immigration-related schemes. The Treasury Department is expected to propose revisions to the Bank Secrecy Act related to customer due diligence requirements, as well as updates to customer identification program rules to address foreign consular identification cards. On June 8, 2026, the…

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Heathrow expansion incompatible with UK legal climate targets, major report finds

New analysis finds that a third runway at Heathrow would blow a hole in the UK’s ability to meet legally binding climate targets.The case for aviation expansion hinges on sustainable aviation fuels and greenhouse gas removals but there is currently no evidence that these technologies can support the scale of expansion envisaged by the government.The climate scientists behind the report recommend the government rejects plans for a third runway. There…

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Russophobia, and How to Fight It

Bursts of prejudice against entire peoples and their cultures have accompanied geopolitical tensions since time immemorial, with numerous nationalities and ethnoreligious groups falling victim to bigotry that emerges out of conflict in the international system. Anton Bespalov, Programme Director of the Valdai Club, explores the nature of Russophobia, a form of national prejudice that is politically charged like no other. For the past several years, Russia has been consumed by…

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IRS Sheds Light on Taxation for Tips and Overtime

Quick Hits The IRS unveiled a new set of detailed FAQs on August 6, 2026, that supersede FAQs that were posted on January 23, 2026, regarding taxation of tips and overtime pay under 2025’s omnibus spending bill. The new FAQs provide information concerning the definition of qualified overtime, eligibility for the deduction, tax withholding obligations, and reporting and correcting qualified overtime on year-end tax forms.   The “no tax on tips…

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Greater Transparency Brought Change to Police Departments—And Then a Reversal

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, a Black teenager, was stopped by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Within minutes, Brown had been shot and killed. In the wake of the killing—and as more deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police officers made headlines—the Black Lives Matter movement, which had begun as a social media campaign the previous year, grew into a nationwide protest movement.The…

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Maryland FAMLI’s Labor Pains: What Unionized Employers Need to Know

Quick Hits Because FAMLI allows an employer to choose to cover an employee’s portion of the contribution, a unionized employer that implements FAMLI’s default 50/50 contribution split without first providing the union with advance notice and an opportunity to request bargaining may risk an unfair labor practice charge. Since employers must already bargain over the contribution split, they could include notice of whether they will implement an Equivalent Private Insurance…

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Can synthetic securitisation support economic growth?

2 September 2026By Johanne Evrard, Wagner Eduardo Schuster, Fabian Wassmann and Michael Wedow Synthetic securitisation can free up bank capital. But does that mean banks lend more to firms? This ECB Blog post explores the effects of loan securitisation. We find that banks that issue synthetic securitisations lend marginally more, but also tend to pay more dividends.In theory, the securitisation of bank loans can strengthen the lending capacity of the…

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Forging a Multipolar Order: The Strategic Logic of Iran-Russia Alignment Under Ayatollah Khamenei

With a precise understanding of the region’s political geography and the international system, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei transformed the continuous challenges posed by external pressures into golden opportunities for creating sustainable coalitions, writes Mohammad Hossein Masoumzadeh. In analysing and examining the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reviewing the approaches and decision-making legacy of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei across various diplomatic arenas assumes special analytical significance. During…

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Is your organisation ready to deliver its AI ambition?

AI investment alone won’t create value. The real question is whether your organisation is ready to turn ambition into adoption, performance and return. Reading time: 5 minutes Every board we speak to has an AI mandate. Almost none of them can tell us whether their organisation can actually deliver it.  That gap between the ambition on the board slide and the reality of the organisation is where much of the…

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Venezuela’s Energy Reopening: New U.S.–Venezuela Oil Agreement and OFAC Amendments: What Businesses and Investors Should Watch

Executive Summary The oil agreement announced by the United States and Venezuela on August 28, 2026, together with OFAC’s August 27 amendments to several Venezuela-related General Licenses, signals a potentially significant new phase for investment in Venezuela’s energy sector. Publicly disclosed terms indicate a 25-year framework covering 17 strategic oil fields, a production objective exceeding 1.5 million barrels per day, and approximately US$100 billion in contemplated private investment. Venezuelan authorities…

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State Department Pauses Immigrant Visa Interviews for New Public Charge Guidance Training

Quick Hits The State Department has paused immigrant visa interview appointments at consulates and embassies worldwide so that its officers can undergo training on new public charge screening guidance. Nonimmigrant visa categories—including tourist, student, and temporary work visas—are currently not impacted by the pause. The pause in appointments appears temporary, though a specific timeline has not been announced. The postponement of immigrant visa interviews comes after DHS policy changes affecting…

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Canada Investment Summit 2026: What business leaders need to know

The Government of Canada will host the inaugural Canada Investment Summit on September 14 and 15, 2026, in Toronto. The Summit is intended to convene the world’s largest investors, including leading CEOs, entrepreneurs and global business leaders around new investment in Canada. The Summit focuses on nation-building projects and related opportunities across defence, major infrastructure, Indigenous partnerships, technology, energy, critical minerals and food and agricultural resilience. The Prime Minister’s Apr.…

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Why Politicians Keep Campaigning on Culture

“It’s the economy, stupid.” For the past three decades, this phrase has been a reliable shorthand for describing what voters really care about.   But these days, political rhetoric often centers on cultural flashpoints like religion or immigration instead of the economy. This tendency to highlight cultural issues over economic ones is surprising, as voters consistently rank the economy among the most important concerns. For example, the share of voters calling…

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How Communities Can Get a Better Deal from Data Centers

This commentary was originally published in Time. The views expressed are the authors’ own.Data center companies “dug their own grave,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Sunday, and “that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.” Nine months ago, Abbott crowned Texas the epicenter of AI development, alongside Google executives announcing a $40 billion investment in the state. Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who actively recruited Amazon’s $20 billion commitment to…

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The AI execution gap

Why AI ambition is outpacing organisational readiness AI investment is accelerating, but business value is not always keeping pace. Q5 have collaborated with our partners across The Transformation Alliance (TTA) to explore what separates experimentation from enterprise-wide impact, revealing where organisations struggle to scale AI and what more mature organisations do differently. Download the full report to discover the findings. Reading time: 4 minutes AI ambition is no longer the…

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State Department to Revoke B-1/B-2 Visas of Asylum Seekers

Quick Hits The State Department is coordinating with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to review and revoke B-1 and B-2 visas issued to foreign nationals between 2016 and 2026 who applied for asylum following their entry into the United States as visitors. Visa revocation generally does not affect the immigration status of an individual currently in the United States, but it will typically prevent reentry into the country…

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Why the drivers of inflation matter for monetary policy

1 September 2026By Kristina Barauskaitė Griškevičienė and Claus Brand The drivers of the recent rise in inflation are different from those of the pandemic-era surge. This time the energy supply shock dominates, while demand and public policy stimulus have minor roles. These differences are key to explaining why monetary policy responses differ.Inflation has risen again in 2026, partly because the war in the Middle East has pushed up energy prices.…

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Russian Education for the Countries of the Global South

Over the past few years, Russia has taken systematic steps to promote the prestige and accessibility of Russian education worldwide, particularly in the Global South. Under Decree No. 309 of May 7, 2024, “On the National Development Goals of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2030 and for the Future up to 2036”, the number of international students at Russian universities is expected to increase to 500,000. This…

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Day Trading, Meet All-Night Trading

The business of Wall Street used to be very slow.  Stocks were bought and sold in person. Clerks manually recorded transactions. And fleets of messengers hand-delivered bond certificates. Trading hours were limited to five to six hours a day so that the rest of the financial industry could keep up with the paperwork.  Today, technology has reduced all of these frictions to near zero. From anywhere in the world, an institution…

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Education and Entertainment—Not a Zero-Sum Game

As video games become increasingly popular, they present a great opportunity to teach a variety of subjects. But that leaves companies attempting to both teach and entertain in a bind. Push the educational content too hard, and players might check out. But dial up the fun factor to increase engagement, and the educational mission could get lost.  This apparent trade-off has dogged educational-game design for years. Unlike gamified classroom tools,…

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The Costly Gap Between Two Career Ladders

You can either help build cars or you can manage the workers who build them. You can write code or set the five-year roadmap for an entire team of coders. You can care for patients or oversee the hospital’s growth.   In short, you can be an expert—an “individual contributor”—or you can be a manager. “There is this well-known idea that if you want to make it inside a company, then at…

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The Prescription for Better Health Insurance? Competition.

The United States is famous for its market-based health-insurance system, where—nominally, at least—many private companies compete and customers have choices.  In reality, U.S. health-insurance markets are dominated by a small group of insurers—or sometimes just one. According to Kellogg professor of strategy Amanda Starc and Martin Gaynor of Carnegie Mellon University, the largest insurer in any given state enjoys 64 percent of market share on average. If you expand it…

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5 Ways Marketers Should Recalibrate in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is upending more than the tools marketers use—it is rewiring how organizations work. As companies begin scaling AI beyond the pilot phase, the bottleneck is no longer the technology itself but its implementation.   The leadership challenge of implementation comes down to reconfiguring workflows, rethinking roles, and bringing people through change. While AI is not changing the roots of marketing—understanding customers, building brands, and creating value are still core principles—it…

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Employer Contributions to Trump Accounts: Partially Explained

Seyfarth Synopsis: The IRS has issued another round of guidance on Trump Accounts, this time addressing employer contributions to Trump Accounts and eligible investments in which Trump Account funds may be invested. While the new guidance answers many of the questions we have all been asking since these investment accounts were originally announced, there are still operational and administrative challenges that remain unresolved. Employers considering whether to contribute to Trump…

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September 2026 Visa Bulletin: Final Action Dates Unchanged, but State Department Warns of Potential Unavailability

Quick Hits USCIS will require employment-based adjustment of status (“green card”) applicants to use the Visa Bulletin’s Final Action Dates chart in September 2026. Final action dates for EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, and EB-5 remain unchanged from August 2026; EB-2 India continues to be unavailable. The State Department warns that EB-1 India, EB-2 (all countries), and EB-5 Unreserved categories may retrogress or become unavailable before the fiscal year closes on September…

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Big tech, big debt: when US tech giants tap the euro area bond market

31 August 2026By Anne Duquerroy, Oana Furtuna, Imène Rahmouni-Rousseau and Lia Vaz CruzUS tech giants are increasingly tapping the euro area bond market to fund their investments. The ECB Blog investigates the consequences for this market and the potential for these developments to reshape it.The infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) requires huge investments. Think of the gigantic data centres and the massive electricity consumption to power them. US tech giants,…

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Prompt payment in British Columbia construction: Deadlines, disputes and adjudication

Prompt payment is coming to British Columbia construction projects On Nov. 27, 2025, the Construction Prompt Payment Act (the Prompt Payment Act, or CPPA) received Royal Assent. When it comes into force, the Prompt Payment Act will introduce a province-wide prompt payment system and bring several updates to the Builders Lien Act. The Prompt Payment Act, alosng with the related amendments to the Builders Lien Act and the Strata Property…

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Ontario Court of Appeal allows social media defamation claim to proceed and awards costs against anti-SLAPP applicant

Development projects often attract vigorous public debate, particularly in smaller communities where land use decisions can become intensely contested. However, Solmar Inc. v. Hall, 2026 ONCA 367 is a reminder that even heated social media debate has limits. The Court of Appeal for Ontario upheld the dismissal of an anti-SLAPP motion brought by a Facebook user who accused a developer of corrupt business practices and suggested municipal officials may have…

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The ETF next door? CIRO and CSA set expectations for foreign ETFs

On July 29, 2026, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published joint Staff Notice 81-339 – Industry Practices Relating to Foreign-Listed Exchange-Traded Funds (the Foreign ETF Notice). The Foreign ETF Notice addresses three key areas: the circumstances in which marketing activity for a foreign ETF may trigger Canadian prospectus and investment fund manager (IFM) registration requirements; the application of the Know Your Product (KYP), Know Your…

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Colorado Unveils New Proposed Rules Implementing Revamped AI Act

Quick Hits Colorado’s proposed AI regulations require employers to disclose the use of automated decision-making technology when making significant employment decisions starting January 1, 2027. Employers would need to explain how AI influenced decisions and provide detailed information about the data sources used if an adverse outcome occurs. The proposed rules emphasize transparency and consumer rights and would mandate clear disclosures and technical requirements for request mechanisms for affected employees.…

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Take 5: Out of the Past

One of the best ways to understand the modern world is to look back at history.  From the origins of government to the peacekeeping role of potatoes in the Old World, episodes from the past can explain a lot about why things are the way they are today. Kellogg researchers are no strangers to this notion. Below, they dive into history, uncovering nuggets of wisdom that have stood the test…

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DHS Proposes New $103,265 Fee for H-1B Cap Petitions: What Employers Need to Know

In a move that could dramatically alter the economics of hiring foreign talent in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proposed a new $103,265 filing fee for H-1B cap-subject petitions. If implemented, the fee would apply to all H-1B petitions filed under the annual cap, including those eligible for the advanced-degree exemption, and would be charged in addition to all existing filing fees. While the proposal…

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Canada Announces $7.5 Billion Support Package for Tariff-Affected Employers

Quick Hits On August 25, 2026, Canada announced new support programs to help employers impacted by the latest round of U.S. tariffs retain workers, fund training, and avoid layoffs. Extended Employment Insurance (EI) measures allow laid-off or separated employees to access benefits sooner and alongside severance payments. Employers may want to assess eligibility for workforce, EI, and financial support programs when planning staffing or separation decisions. Here is a summary…

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Valdai Club to Present the Report ‘Brazil-Russia Cooperation: Strategic Guidelines for Overcoming Structural Constraints’

On 17 September at 16:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host a presentation of the report titled “Contemporary Brazil–Russia Cooperation: Strategic Guidelines for Overcoming Structural Constraints.” Brazil’s diplomatic stance on the Ukrainian crisis has helped maintain dialogue with Russia and ensured unprecedented growth in trade flows. Both countries have managed to adapt to the crisis: bilateral trade figures for 2022–2026 were the highest ever recorded, with trade turnover exceeding…

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