FIRB Notice -- Residential Property Related

Dear all

As you are aware, the Treasury of Australia just announced new FIRB policy last Sunday.

Regarding the FIRB new policy, Edmund and I are working on it.

FIRB new policy will have a big impact on foreign investment.

For Residential Property purchase-related, the policy has not been changed but the time frame has been changed from 30 days to 6 months.

If we have a recent exchange contract (especially our shanghai office), please review the relevant FIRB clause and ensure our purchaser client will comply with the clause and if necessary we have to seek to make a variation with the vendor solicitor regarding Subject to FIRB clause.

Fei Wang
Prudentia Legal
31 March 2020

Working From Home Notice

Dear Sydney and Melbourne colleagues

The novel coronavirus outbreak in Australia becomes more and more serious.

In order to protect our staff, we have decided to make arrangements for working-from-home, details as follows:

It is not compulsory to do so for everyone but we encourage you to do so.

We will try to make an arrangement for one person in each office during office hours.

Commencement: 18 March 2020


Working from home Time: AUS EAST Time from 9 AM to 6 PM with a one-hour lunch break and your standard morning and afternoon tea breaks.

Hardware requirements at home:

1. Computer - Windows or Mac -- with a mic and camera.
2. Mobile Phone (by the company or your own ONLY IF you are not given a company phone) -- WeChat and Leap shall have been installed on your work phone.
   Please get used to the conference call/call waiting/call forwarding function on your mobile phone.
3. Internet connection

Software: Teamview/Skype/Zoom/WeChat/LEAP/Google Drive

You should ensure that your working station and your home computer should have Teamview installed. Teamviewer 

As a backup, please also download the Anydesk at your work station and home computer. Any Desk

Then you can remotely access your working station by Teamview or Anydesk at home when you can use Outlook and Leap on your working station.

If you do not know how to do it, please contact Ada or one of the partners.

You should have Skype installed on your home computer, and please log in with your assigned office username and password for Skype. Install Skype click here

You shall have Zoom installed on your home computer and registered Zoom with your work email address. Zoom Website. 

You should have wechat installed on your computer if you have a work WeChat account.

We may use Google Drive and LEAP to share documents.

Procedure:

1. In the morning, at 9 am, please log on Skype and notify your attendance in your office group. During lunchtime, you may notify your office skype group when you are away from the desk and should notify your office skype group when you are back. When you finish your work, please notify in the group.
2. You should remain online throughout the business hours and communicate via Skype, or mobile phone. Everyone should provide the contactable mobile number including working phone and personal phone numbers (for urgent / emergency contact). You are required to reply instant message and telephone phone calls no less than 2 hours during working days.
3. Check your emails as if you are working normally. It is required that you should reply emails within 24 hours during business days.
4. If there is a meeting and/or court attendance, you will need to attend. Please make your personal arrangement. Working from home would not stop meeting if it is necessary. We DO NOT encourage meeting clients during this period and suggest that using alternative meeting methods such as a teleconference or video conference.
5. We may have online meeting/training; which you will be required to log into Zoom to join the meeting. We may require a video conference so please ensure you have a mic and a camera with your computer.

Work Report:

You may be required to provide a daily work report using google sheet sharing with the management.

Your work may be monitored through the LEAP report system. So please record all your work time on LEAP and also save all documents/correspondence to the LEAP.

We are not able to determine the time when we will resume normal work back to the office. But we will keep you updated and once it is safe, we will require your guys back to the office.

This platform will be the main platform to give notice to our staff, so please check it regularly.

Yours sincerely,


Prudentia Legal Partners
17 March 2020

Migration Service Price

Dear colleagues

We have updated our migration service price list and also updated our business migration introduction documents.

You may find the relevant documents here.


FW
16 March 202

Alipay Notice

Dear colleagues

Alipay is one of payment method popular in China and our firm is using this as one of our payment methods.

Due to the Chinese foreign exchange restriction, Alipay has strict rules.

All payments through Alipay must be for legal fees payment purpose, with the support of evidence of costs agreement, payment instruction etc. Otherwise, payments may be denied or the service may be suspended.

Recently we have been audited twice for our Alipay system so that many customers and colleagues recently reported that the Alipay system cannot be used.

Ada is currently talking to the Alipay representative in Australia.

They are speeding up the review process now, however, they cannot guarantee that our payment services will not be affected at this stage.

In addition to Alipay, please offer our client multiple payment methods in case any delays.

You will be notified for the progress of the Alipay arrangement.

Thanks.

Prudentia Legal Management
13/03/2020

Knowledge Sharing PPTs

12 March 2020

Today Krystina Guo delivered a presentation on the topic of Legal Professional Privilege. 

More details click here. 

FW

Recent Migration Case Good News

Everyone is aware that we are providing migration services.

Working related visas are quite popular in Australia and are part of migration services. 

Working visa, mostly subclass 482 visa, will require three steps: 

1. Employer Sponsorship
2. Employer Nomination & 
3. Employee Visa Application

For the last several years, the second stage becomes harder and harder as the Department of Home Affairs is trying to restrict overseas workers coming to Australia. 

But for the last couple of weeks, we have two successful nomination cases being granted. 

One is for an IT related company. The Nomination was approved within several weeks after we lodged the nomination application while the employee was blocked in China due to the virus outbreak. 

We were confident with the case as the Employer is a quite big company and the employee has been working for this position for a period. The only issue for this case is the salary issue -- because the employee's promised salary might be a little lower than the market salary. But the issue was not challenged by the Department of Home Affairs. 

The second is a very difficult case with a long history. 

The client had been in Australia several years and his last application for working visa (482) was refused based on the refusal of the nomination. The last visa and nomination visa application was prepared by a lousy migration agent who did not prepare sufficient information and evidence. 

After we have been retained by the client, we did extensive research and careful planning, and also prepare and/or collect all relevant documents. The nomination was lodged on this Monday, 9 March 2020. It was granted today, 4 days later. It is record-breaking. The client is very happy while we are preparing his visa application. 

We provide professional legal service to our client whose satisfaction is our goal. 

FW 

12/03/2020

Notice on 12 March 2020

Dear Prudentia Legal colleagues

As you may be aware, the outbreak of coronavirus has impacted worldwide.

From epicentre Wuhan to South Korea, then Iran, Italy and then the whole world including Australia.

Our Shanghai office was closed for an additional two weeks after the Chinese New Year and now they are back to work normally, but access to the office would be limited due to the Chinese government implemented policy, so that we do not encourage clients to attend our Shanghai office unless it is extremely urgent and absolutely necessary.

This Monday, Anita Jie, has suffered appendicitis (阑尾炎) and could not attend work since. She may be back to work in due course but at the current stage arrangement for work-from-home has been arranged for Anita..

Currently, there are over 100 confirmed cases in Australia while VIC has 18 cases. The Australian government has announced several billions of funds to fight against the virus.

Safety of our staff is our priority.

Ailin was isolated for two weeks after she visited China during the Chinese New Year.

Helen JI of our Melbourne is suffering from a cold with a fever this week and she has visited a doctor (GP) who had advised it is flu and the coronavirus test was not necessary for Helen. Helen is currently staying at home and an alternative working arrangement has been made.

Even though Helen is feeling better, for safety reasons, she has been asked to stay home for isolation purposes. But due to the high demand for settlement preparation, Helen will work at home for this period. We are not sure when Helen will be able to be back to the office.

This is a special arrangement for Helen and Anita at this stage. We wish them full and speedy recovery.

If you feel unwell, especially suffering fever, cough, breathing difficulties etc, please do not hesitate to contact the local health advisor, and also report to the management of our firm.

Partners of Prudentia Legal

Date: 12 March 2020