Privacy & cookies

Last modified: May 4 2020

Under data protection laws and regulations in the territories where we operate, we have a legal duty to protect any personal information we collect from you. We are committed to protecting your information and strictly adhere to the requirements of such data protection legislation.

It is important that you read this Privacy Policy together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.

DC Advisory is made up of different legal entities, details of which can be found on our Legal page. This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of the DC Advisory Group (as defined under “Legal”) and references to “DC Advisory,” “we,” “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy are references to the relevant company in the DC Advisory Group responsible for processing your data.

A. PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

1. WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Personal information means any information relating to an individual person who is identified or identifiable, directly or indirectly, including by reference to a particular identifier, and may include, for example, name, email address, date of birth, etc.

2. WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

When you make a general enquiry through our contact page, we may ask you for your full name and contact information, such as a telephone number, email address and your company. We will also collect any personal information included in the message that you submit to us. If you enquire about experienced hires or graduate opportunities, we ask you to submit a CV and cover letter.

When you become our client or establish a client relationship with us, as an individual or on behalf of your organization, we require that you provide us with certain information about yourself, including name, permanent and mailing address, email address, and telephone number. Additionally, please note that we have certain responsibilities under the US Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) Customer Due Diligence Rule (the “CDD Rule”), UK Money Laundering Regulations 2007 and other rules and regulations, to verify the identity, and confirm the beneficial ownership, of clients, and we may need to make certain inquiries and obtain certain information from you for that purpose. For example, we may need to obtain the date of birth, social security number (or passport or similar identification number) and a copy of the driver’s license and/or other similar documents from certain equity holders and senior management of a client.

During the course of any client relationship, we may also obtain personal information about you from other sources. For example, we may collect background information or financial information from and through third-party vendors to verify representations you have made and to comply with various regulatory requirements. For more details, see “Regulatory- United States- Anti-Money Laundering.”

We may collect payment data, such as data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, including bank account details and other billing information.

In connection with the registration for, and provision of access to, an event or seminar, we may ask for information about your health for the purpose of identifying and being considerate of any disabilities or special dietary requirements you may have. Any use of such information is based on your consent.
We may also collect personal information regarding your preferences where it is relevant to services that we provide.

3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?

In certain circumstances, we may request and collect personal information from you directly, including the following:

When you or your organisation seek client services from us;
When you or your organisation subscribe to our services or publications or sign up to receive our marketing communications or to attend a DC Advisory event;
When you provide us with feedback, use the “contact us” section of our website or otherwise communicate with us; or
When you or your organisation provide (or offer to provide) services to us.

In addition, when you or your organisation interact with our website, we may automatically collect technical data about your computer equipment or device, IP address, general location information such as city, state or geographic area (but not your precise geolocation data), browsing actions and patterns, and other clickstream information. We may collect this information using cookies or similar technologies. Please find details in our Cookie Policy below.

We may also collect personal information that is publicly available or engage third-party firms to collect personal information on our behalf, for example, such background check information or financial information that may be used to verify representations you have made and to comply with various regulatory requirements.

4. FOR WHAT PURPOSES WILL WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We use personal information for the following purposes or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or at the time of collection:

Delivery of Services. We may use your personal information to:

Communicate with clients and other individuals in connection with providing financial advisory or other services; or
Respond to your requests, questions and feedback.

Marketing and communications. We may send you transaction announcements, market commentary, relevant sector briefings, DC Advisory announcements and other details of events or news updates. With any marketing communications that you receive from us, you will be provided with the option to opt out of future marketing communications. (You may also opt out of marketing communications by emailing enquiriesdcadvisory.com at any time)

To comply with law. We may use and share your personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities.

For compliance, fraud prevention, and safety. We may use your personal information and disclose it to law enforcement, government authorities, and private parties as we believe necessary or appropriate to: (i) protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); (ii) audit our internal processes for compliance with legal and contractual requirements; (iii) enforce the terms and conditions that govern services that we provide; and (iv) prevent, identify, investigate and deter fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity, including cyberattacks and identity theft.

With your consent. In some cases we may specifically ask for your consent to collect, use or share your personal information, such as when required by law.

5. WILL WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We may share your personal information within the DC Advisory Group on a confidential basis where necessary for the purpose of providing our services to you, [including with third parties that help us to provide our services or to operate our business, for example IT, hosting, human resources services, email, marketing, client relationship management, event management, and database management services.

We may need to share your personal information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, or as otherwise required to comply with applicable law.

We may also share your personal information with our financial auditors, our insurers and insurance brokers, and other professional advisers in the course of the advice we provide to you.

We may also sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) involving DC Advisory, such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution.

We do not sell, rent or exchange your personal information with any third party for commercial reasons. It is our policy not to provide your personal information to third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes without your consent.

6. HOW LONG WILL WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected your personal information, or as necessary to fulfil a legitimate business need, including to satisfy any legal, accounting or reporting requirements, to provide you with a service you have requested, to establish or defend legal claims, for business continuity purposes, or for fraud prevention.

When it is no longer necessary for us to retain your personal information, we will delete or destroy it.

7. HOW DO KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURE?

We will take reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from unauthorized loss, use or disclosure. These measures include physical and technical information security measures as well as organisational policies and procedures.

8. WILL WE TRANSFER YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION ABROAD?

The ultimate parent company for the DC Advisory Group is incorporated in Japan. We may need to transfer your personal information to our parent or within the other entities within the DC Advisory Group, including our alliance partners, as appropriate, which are located across Europe, Asia and North America, for the legitimate purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. The countries where we may need to transfer data may not provide the same level of data protection as the laws of your local jurisdiction. We will ensure that any such international transfers are made subject to appropriate safeguards.

B. INFORMATION FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

We are required under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the “CCPA”) to provide California residents with certain information about the rights granted to California residents under the CCPA and about our practices with respect to the collection, use and sharing of personal information. For the purposes of this section of this Privacy Policy, “personal information” has the meaning given to that term under the CCPA.

1. PRIVACY RIGHTS OF CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

Where applicable and with certain exceptions, California residents have the following privacy rights under the CCPA:

The right to request information described below about how we have collected and used personal information about you within the past 12 months, subject to certain exceptions and limitations:
- The categories of personal information we have collected about you;
- The categories of sources from which we collected personal information about you;
- The categories of third parties to whom your personal information was disclosed;
- The business or commercial purpose for which your personal information was collected and/or sold;
- Whether we have disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, and if so, the categories of personal information received by each category of third party recipient; and
- Whether we have sold your personal information for a business purpose, and if so, the categories of personal information sold to each category of third party recipient;
The right to request a copy of the specific pieces of personal information we hold about you;
The right to request that we erase your personal information, subject to certain exceptions;
The right to direct a business that sells your personal information to cease selling your personal information; and
The right to be free from discrimination for exercising any of the rights above.

In certain instances, we are only obligated to comply with verified consumer requests, and we will need to verify your identity prior to addressing or fulfilling a request made pursuant to the CCPA. Your request must provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify that the request comes from the person about whom we collected personal information or a person authorized to act on their behalf.

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to personal information collected about you. If a request is made by an agent on your behalf, the agent must provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify that they have been properly designated or authorized by you to act on their behalf.

Please also understand that we are not obligated to provide you with a copy of personal information about you more than twice in a 12-month period.

2. HOW TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS

If you are a California resident, you can exercise your rights by contacting our Chief Compliance Officer:

By telephone at 212-904-9400, or
By mail at: DC Advisory, 605 Third Avenue, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10158 Attn: Compliance Department

3. PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT, USE AND SHARE

We are also required under the CCPA to provide California residents with certain information about how we collect, use and share personal information by reference to statutory categories set forth in the CCPA. The chart below summarizes our practices with respect to personal information of California residents during the 12 months preceding the date of this Privacy Policy, by reference to the information provided above.

Please note that DC Advisory does not, and will not, “sell” personal information collected about you, as “selling” is defined in the CCPA.

Statutory Category	Information Collected	Sources of Information	Purposes of Collection	Disclosures to Third Parties
Identifiers (such as name, email, address, phone number)	See section A.2	See sections A.2 and A.3	See sections A.3 and A.4	See section A.5
Financial, medical or insurance information (such as payment cards, financial account numbers)	See section A.2	See sections A.2 and A.3	See sections A.2, A.3 and A.4	See section A.5
Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law (such as age, gender, race, citizenship)	See section A.2	See sections A.2 and A.3	See section A.4	See section A.5
Commercial activity and information (such as transaction history)	See section A.2	See section A.3	See section A.4	See section A.5
Internet or network activity and information (such as usage and browsing data)	See sections A.2 and D	See sections A.3 and D	See sections A.4 and D	See sections A.5 and D
Professional or employment information	See section A.2	See section A.3	See sections A.3 and A.4	See section A.5
Geolocation data	See section A.2	See sections A.2 and A.3	See section A.4	See section A.5
Sensory information (such as photos, other recorded electronic information)	See section A.2]	See section A.3	See section A.4	See section A.5
Inferences drawn from any personal information collected	Not collected in ordinary business operations	Not collected in ordinary business operations	Not collected in ordinary business operations	Not collected in ordinary business operations

C. INFORMATION FOR PERSONS SUBJECT TO EU DATA PROTECTION LAW

With respect to persons located in the European Union (“EU”), European Economic Area (“EEA”), the United Kingdom (“UK”) or other locations subject to EU (and aligned) data protection laws (collectively “Europe”), we recognize and comply with relevant data protection laws, including Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation or “GDPR”), and we provide the following information in accordance with such law. For the purposes of this section of this Privacy Policy, “personal information” has the same meaning as “personal data” under GDPR.

With respect to personal information subject to GDPR, the “controller” entity is Daiwa Corporate Advisory Limited and our contact details are as follows:

Daiwa Corporate Advisory Limited
5 King William Street
London EC4N 7DA, United Kingdom

For any questions or concerns regarding the processing of personal information, please contact the compliance department at the address above or by emailing Data.Privacydcadvisory.com.

1. LAWFUL BASES FOR PROCESSING PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will only use your personal information when we are allowed to do so by law.

We process personal information subject to GDPR under one or more of the following legal bases:

Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your fundamental rights do not override those interests;
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (e.g. anti-money laundering regulations);
Where we provide you with financial advisory services and need to perform our contract with you; or
Where you have expressly given us your consent.

Where we rely on your consent for using your personal information, you have the right to withdraw it any time in the manner indicated when you provide consent.

2. PRIVACY RIGHTS OF RESIDENTS OF EUROPE

If you are a resident of Europe, applicable data protection laws provide you with certain rights, which may include the following, subject to certain exceptions and conditions:

The right to ask us for a copy of the personal information which we hold about you, which may, to the extent applicable, be provided in an electronic format that you may transmit to another controller;
The right to ask that any information we hold about you is updated, rectified or deleted; and
The right to object to or restrict our using your personal information.

You can make a request to exercise any of these rights free of charge by contacting us at Data.Privacy@dcadvisory.com; however, we reserve the right to charge a reasonable fee if your request is manifestly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.

If you feel that we have not been able to resolve your query or concerns regarding our processing of your personal information, you may raise a formal complaint. If you remain unsatisfied with our response, you may take your complaint to the relevant privacy regulator, which is the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in the United Kingdom. Further information is available on the ICO website, at https://ico.org.uk/, or by telephone at 0303 123 1113.

Please also find the relevant information for the German authority Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit. Further information is available on the website https://datenschutz.hessen.de, by email Data.Privacypoststelle, by telephone +49 611 1408-0 or by telefax +49 611 1408-900.

3. TRANSFERS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION OUTSIDE OF THE EEA

The ultimate parent company for the DC Advisory Group is incorporated in Japan, and we have other entities within the wider group based both inside and outside the EEA. We may need to transfer your personal information to one of these territories, or to other locations, for the legitimate purposes outlined above.

The countries where we may need to transfer data may not by law provide the same level of data protection as the laws within the EEA. We will ensure that any such international transfers are made in accordance with applicable legal requirements and subject to appropriate safeguards as required by GDPR, such as by using EU Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the European Commission, pursuant to the recipient’s compliance with EU-US Privacy Shield (or Swiss-US Privacy Shield, as applicable) or other safeguards recognized by the European Commission. Please contact us at Data.Privacy@dcadvisory.com for further information about any such transfers or the specific safeguards applied.

D. COOKIE POLICY

1. WHAT ARE COOKIES AND HOW ARE THEY USED?

We use a technology called “cookies” as part of a normal business procedure. Cookies are small text files that are created by a web server and stored on your computer or device when you visit a website. They are not executable code and can only be read by (you and) the website that created them. You can view and edit the cookies on your computer or device like any other text file using a text editor (the contents are usually just strings of unique identifiers and date/timestamps). The website that created the cookie can read the contents when you are at their website.

Cookies are widely used across the internet; you may have hundreds of cookies on your computer at any one time. Each browser has its own set of cookies so, if you run multiple browsers, you will have multiple sets of cookies on your computer or device.

We use cookies to make a user’s experience of our website more efficient and to improve your browsing experience. We also use Google Analytics, which are third-party cookies that allow us to analyse how users use our website, for example, by counting the number of visitors to the website and calculating the average number of pages a user views. The data we obtain from Google Analytics is valuable in helping us to improve the quality and content of the website.

If at any time you wish to disable our cookies you may do so through the settings on your browser. These settings allow you to specify which cookies you will accept by type and often by specific websites using an exception list, for example, you can block all cookies and then list the website from which you will accept cookies. Please note, however, that withdrawing your agreement to the use of cookies on our website will impair the functionality of the website.

List of cookies in use on this website

Persistent or Necessary (2 cookies)

Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry	Type
ARRAffinity	https://www.dcadvisory.com/	Used for load balancing to make sure the visitor page requests are routed to the same server in any browsing session	Session	HTTP Cookie
smConsent	https://www.dcadvisory.com/	Stores the user's cookie consent state for the current domain	1 year	HTTP Cookie

Performance (3 cookies)

Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiry	Type
_ga	https://www.dcadvisory.com/	Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website	1 year	HTTP Cookie
_gat	https://www.dcadvisory.com/	Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate	Session	HTTP Cookie
_gid	https://www.dcadvisory.com/	Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website	Session	HTTP Cookie

Your consent to the use of cookies applies to https://www.dcadvisory.com/.

You can view and change your cookie settings at any time.

For more detailed information, please refer to the following website: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage.

Setting your cookie preferences

You can control how cookies are placed on your device from within your own browser. You can also delete existing cookies from your browser. However, refusing and/or deleting cookies may mean some sections of our site will not work properly.

E. UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to the way in which we process your personal information or changes in applicable law or regulatory requirements. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy and posting it on our website. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting of the modified Privacy Policy (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting).

We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to be informed of how we use your personal information.

F. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or our collection and use of personal information, please email us at Data.Privacy@dcadvisory.com ,or you may write to us via postal mail at:

For parties in the United States

DC Advisory
605 Third Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10158
Attn: Compliance Department

For parties located outside of the United States

DC Advisory
5 King William Street
London, EC4N 7DA
Attn: Compliance Department