8:00 – 8:50 – Registration and breakfast

8:50 – 9:00 – Welcome remarks from International Employment Lawyer 

9:00 – 9:45 – Keynote address

9:45 – 10:45 – Plenary Session 1: Two worlds of work: Global trends vs US direction of travel

The international employment law landscape is increasingly defined not by convergence, but by divergence. While many nations are expanding worker protections, transparency obligations, and regulatory oversight of corporate decision-making, the US under the Trump administration is creating an even more employer-friendly environment. With experts from around the globe, this panel will provide a whistle-stop tour of the latest landmark legislative and regulatory developments outside the US, examine how they are reshaping compliance expectations, and assess how US-headquartered multinationals can manage growing legal fragmentation while remaining operationally coherent across their global operations.

10:45 – 11:30 – Coffee break 

11:30 – 12:30 – Breakout Session 1: Equity for everyone? The global expansion of employee ownership

Once reserved for founders and senior executives, equity is being extended to broader employee populations in a bid to drive engagement and retention in an increasingly competitive and mobile talent market. But expanding participation in equity plans is far from straightforward. Multinationals face a patchwork of local rules that can make a globally consistent approach difficult – if not impossible. Companies that can successfully balance accessibility, compliance, and operational simplicity may gain a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining global talent, while those that underestimate the complexity risk costly disputes, compliance failures, and employee dissatisfaction.

11:30 – 12:30 – Breakout Session 2: Beyond the shop floor: How modern trade unions are rewriting their strategy

Trade unions are no longer operating solely within the confines of traditional collective bargaining frameworks. Instead, they are deploying a sophisticated mix of digital mobilisation, legal strategy, cross-border coordination, and public narrative campaigns. For global employers, this represents a shift from managing local labour relations to engaging with coordinated, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-stakeholder labour strategies that operate across legal, political, and reputational dimensions simultaneously. This session will explore the latest union strategies globally, the drivers behind their evolution, and what this means for employers navigating increasingly complex workforce dynamics.

12:30 – 14:00 – Networking lunch 

14:00 – 15:00 – Breakout Session 3: The talent deal boom: Why acqui-hires are in vogue

Acqui-hires are experiencing a resurgence driven by tighter capital markets, AI disruption, startup consolidation, and intense competition for specialist talent. Companies are increasingly looking to acquire teams rather than products – especially in areas where intellectual capital, speed-to-market, and domain expertise matter more than standalone business viability. This panel will explore the renewed popularity of acqui-hire transactions across various sectors and how these deals are structured in practice. It will also examine the growing complexity of cross-border hiring, including employee transfer rules, retention incentives, restrictive covenants, IP ownership, data protection, and the treatment of equity and option holders. 

14:00 – 15:00 – Breakout Session 4: Dual pressure: How employee and investor activism is reshaping decision-making

Employment decision-making is no longer an internal management function operating behind closed doors. It is increasingly shaped by two powerful and often competing forces: employees demanding transparency, fairness, and a voice, and investors demanding efficiency, performance, and ideological transformation. The intersection of these two forces means decision-making is no longer made in isolation but are subject to simultaneous internal and external scrutiny. This session will explore what employee and investor activists are targeting, how their influence is reshaping employment decision-making, and what this means for governance, legal risk, and organisational strategy in multinational companies.

15:00 – 15:30 – Coffee break 

15:30 – 16:30 – Plenary Session 2: Cutting costs with code: AI-driven layoffs and the legal limits of “efficiency”

AI is rapidly changing not just how work is done worldwide. Across industries, employers have been using AI for recruitment, day-to-day task management, workplace surveillance, and performance evaluation. But the efficiency gains and insight from these new systems are now feeding directly into large-scale restructuring exercises – thus creating new legal and reputational risks. For multinationals, the challenge is no longer whether AI can identify efficiencies – it is whether those efficiencies can be translated into legally compliant and defensible decisions at the local level.

16:30 – 17:30 – Plenary Session 3: Ethics under pressure: Counsel’s role in high-stakes workforce decisions

Employment counsel are increasingly embedded at the centre of sensitive workforce decisions, expected not only to advise on legal risk but to help shape how those decisions are designed and implemented. This shift raises pressing questions about independence, judgement, and where legal advice ends and operational decision-making begins. This session will examine how those ethical boundaries are being tested in practice, how they vary across jurisdictions, and how lawyers can navigate the growing overlap between legal counsel and workforce strategy.

17:30 onwards – Closing remarks and networking drinks reception kindly sponsored by International Labour Law Network