Month: May 2023

Saas.group strengthens its position in the region with Beekast

Posted on by Valentin Poitou

Saas.group, a company specializing in the development and acquisition of software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups, announced in May 2023 its acquisition of Beekast, a French collaborative platform that helps companies create, run and monitor meetings and training sessions on a daily basis. This acquisition is designed to strengthen Saas.group’s presence on the French market.

 

The acquisition of Beekast follows that of Crosstalent in France, a provider of HR tools for medium-sized and large companies, and is part of the group’s drive to strengthen its presence on the French market, where the company now has almost 40 employees. Beekast, a company founded in 2015 by Yassine Chabli, the start-up’s founder and CEO, today boasts over a million active users across nearly 1,000 partner companies (including Google, ESSEC and Action Logement Services).

 

Thanks to this acquisition, Beekast will continue to be an independent French company, strengthening Saas.group’s presence on the French market. Saas.group has acquired fourteen companies to date, incluing Beekast, Crosstalent, Tower, Rewardful, Prerender, Juicer, Seobility and others. With almost 180 employees in some twenty different countries, the group aims to develop and offer online development and e-commerce solutions to companies specializing in marketing, human resources and e-learning.

 

 

Joffe & Associés (Christophe Joffe, Charlotte Viandaz and Oriana Castelli) acted for Beekast’s shareholders in this transaction.

 

Data transfers to the United States – Record €1.2 billion fine for Meta Ireland

Posted on by Valentin Poitou

Article written byEmilie de Vaucresson, Amanda Dubarry and Camille Leflour.

 

On 22 May 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commission (the “DPC”), acting as the lead supervisory authority, announced that it has fined Meta Ireland a record €1.2 billion for violating Article 46(1) of the GDPR by transferring personal data to the U.S. without implementing the appropriate safeguards.

 

Since the invalidation of the Privacy Shield, Meta Ireland had been implementing these transfers on the basis of the standard contractual clauses, in conjunction with additional measures that the DPC considered insufficient in light of the risks to the rights and freedoms of data subjects. The data of its European users is indeed stored in the United States, exposing them to potential surveillance by the US authorities.

 

The investigation was initially launched in August 2020 as part of a cooperation procedure. The draft decision prepared by the DPC was then submitted to its counterpart regulators in the EU/EEA, who rejected it and referred it to the European Data Protection Committee (the “EDPS”).

 

On the basis of the EDPB’s decision, the DPC adopted the final decision under which Meta Ireland is required:

  • to suspend any future transfers of personal data to the United States within 5 months from the date of notification of the decision to Meta Ireland;
  • to pay an administrative fine of €1.2 billion – the highest fine ever imposed under the GDPR – justified by the seriousness of the alleged breaches by Facebook’s parent company, which has millions of users in Europe, involving a huge volume of data transferred in violation of the GDPR; and
  • to bring its processing operations into compliance with the GDPR by ceasing the unlawful processing, including storage, in the United States of personal data of EU/EEA users transferred without safeguards, within 6 months from the date of notification of the DPC’s decision to Meta Ireland.

In the words of Andrea Jelinek, President of the EDPS, “this sanction is a strong signal to organizations that serious breaches have considerable consequences”. Indeed, it comes in a context of increasing controls on GAFAMs, this sanction being the fourth fine imposed on Meta Ireland in 6 months.

 

For its part, Meta Ireland describes this fine as “unjustified and unnecessary” and wants to request its suspension in court. In this context, the social network hopes that the European Commission will soon adopt the new draft adequacy decision for data transfer to the United States.

 

For the time being, as long as no agreement has been reached between Europe and the United States on the framework for data flows to the United States, we would like to remind you that the simple signing of standard contractual clauses is not sufficient to ensure a data transfer that complies with the GDPR. It is necessary to verify that additional guarantees have been implemented by the recipient of data in the United States to ensure the confidentiality of data and the impossibility of access for the American authorities.

Joffe & Associés opens a new office in Los Angeles

Posted on by Valentin Poitou

Los Angeles : Find the original article of “Les Echos : Capital Finance” here.

 

Heading to the United States for the business law firm. After London in 2013, the French firm opens a second office abroad. Pavlos Petrovas (DEA in International and European Litigation Law, University of Paris Nanterre, LL.M. Northwestern University) is taking over the reins of this office located in Los Angeles. Before joining the firm in 2022, Pavlos Petrovas, admitted to the Paris, New York and Los Angeles bars, worked for nearly eight years at Hughes Hubbard & Reed in international litigation and arbitration.

Pony raises 6 million euros to develop its free floating offer

Posted on by Valentin Poitou

Find the original post from Pony’s Linkedin account right here.

 

The company Pony, which offers high-end self-service electric bikes and scooters available for rent directly from a smartphone, has announced the raising of nearly 6 million euros with the aim of offering smart and innovative solutions, to avoid the mistakes that some cities have experienced.

 

Founded in 2017 in Oxford by a French couple (Clara Vaisse and Paul-Adrien Cormerais), this start-up quickly relocated to France (more precisely to Angers), and is now the only French company to offer free-floating electric bikes and scooters (Free-floating is a form of shared mobility that consists of leaving a vehicle at the disposal of the public without it being attached to a station or terminal).

 

For its second round of financing, and as part of the development of its solution, the Angevine company (advised by Joffe & Associés) announces a fundraising of nearly 6 million euros. The company has raised €4.5 million from new investors: Épopée Gestion and Aquiti Gestion. They are accompanied by their historical investors Demeter Investment Managers, who arrived during the first seed round of €2.2M in 2019. The amount is now up to €6 million, through debt subscribed with a pool of banking partners composed of BNP Paribas, CIC and BPRI.

 

Paul-Adrien Cormerais, co-founder of Pony, explains that “in our market, we estimate that we can cross the €100 million turnover mark after the 2026 municipal elections”. Currently, the company has about thirty employees, allowing it to provide more than 15 partner cities for over 500,000 users in France.