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Cavinder Bull SC and Chia Voon Jiet of Drew & Napier examine the role of lawyers and in-house counsel in discovery for litigation proceedings in Singapore

It's no secret that the financial transaction tax (FTT) has not been the resounding success the European Commission (EC) had hoped for.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is working to increase its profile both within Asia and around the world. Its head of corporate strategy spoke to IFLR about its international plans.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA) is recognised for having the key components for a strong DCM group; a large book and innovative strategies for tackling deals. While nearly anything will sell in an active market, prevailing conditions have required greater creativity on the part of banking teams.

Global bank reforms – most notably Basel III – have spurred the development of alternatives to traditional bank lending, and in turn, prompted the increasing sophistication of Asia's DCM. With its focus on emerging markets, Standard Chartered has been at the forefront of DCM's evolution in the region.

Alexei Bonamin Marcus Vinicius Fonseca On September 5 2013, the Brazilian National Monetary Council enacted Resolution 4,263, which finally regulated structured operations certificates (certificado de operações estruturadas) or COEs. Similar to a structured note, COEs are already used by banks in other countries, which allows the combination of different investment structures, such as fixed-income and variable-income, in one instrument. The COE was created in 2010 together with financial bills (letras financeiras) by the Provisional Measure (Medida Provisória) of December 15 2009, (converted into Law 12,249 of June 11 2010), to be a fundraising alternative for banks established in Brazil.

Elias Neocleous On August 8 the Cyprus Government published a roadmap for the lifting of restrictions that were imposed on banking operations in March 2013, and which apply to funds in the domestic banking system at the time of the bail-in. Funds remitted to Cyprus from abroad after March 27 2013 are exempt from the restrictions. The government is committed to restoring the free movement of capital as soon as conditions allow, and indeed a number of relaxations of the controls have already taken place. The roadmap reflects the strategy agreed between the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Cyprus and the troika of international lenders, namely that controls should remain in place only for as long as is strictly necessary, and should be gradually removed through prudent incremental steps, so as to safeguard financial stability.

The People's Republic of China (China) and the Macau Special Administrative Region of the PRC (Macau) signed, on October 17 2003, the Mainland and Macau Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). The purpose of this agreement, which is an FTA-like arrangement concluded between two separate customs territories of a single sovereign state, is to promote the joint economic prosperity and development of China and Macau, as well as to enhance the level of economic and trade cooperation between them. Moreover, CEPA is an open agreement, that is, its contents can be continuously deepened, enriched or amended, according to the economic needs of the two parties. In this regard, over the past decade, 10 supplements to CEPA have been signed, the last of which – Supplement X to CEPA – was signed on August 30 2013, and will come into effect on January 1 2014.

The massive digitalisation of society has given rise to the need to amend legislation to accommodate the requirements of the new digital era. After years of relatively outdated copyright legislation in the Slovak Republic, an amendment to the Copyright Act was adopted and will come into force on November 1 2013. The amendment simplifies the entire process of obtaining licences to use works. The main difference to the original legislation is that a licence agreement can be concluded by setting out only a minimum of particulars, which are:

James Stacey and Angela Taylor of Slaughter and May advise caution when dealing with unilateral jurisdiction clauses