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The British bank’s contingent capital offering proved a hit with investors. But its competitors are a little more wary

Will less stringent regulation boost innovation in China’s securities market?

In Pepsico Puerto Rico, Inc v Commissioner, the US Tax Court found that PepsiCo's 'advance agreements' between Pepsico Puerto Rico (a Delaware corporation) and a Netherlands affiliate were equity rather than debt for federal income tax purposes. This, in turn, permitted PepsiCo to treat payments on the advance agreements as non-taxable returns of capital rather than interest payments for the taxable years in question.

Asia’s debt capital markets have long lived in the shadow of the region’s buoyant listing markets. Not for much longer

HK’s new sponsor rules could lock up funding as well as sponsors That Hong Kong wants to protect the reputations of its H-share and A-share companies is understandable – particularly following the issues that have troubled US-listed ChinaCos. But while listing location is rarely chosen on the basis of a regulator's vetting process, Hong Kong's new sponsor regulations may have made initial public offerings (IPOs) prohibitively expensive. Hong Kong's sponsor regulations have left small firms with few options. The rules might have noble underpinnings, but their provisions are heavy-handed. The risk sponsors take means that we are likely to see far fewer small IPOs getting done in Hong Kong.

Ten years after its creation, has Hong Kong’s Securities & Futures Appeals Tribunal proved an effective review panel?

Shunsuke Minowa As a result of continuing low domestic demand for funding, the amount of syndicated loans made in Japan has remained stagnant, at a level of approximately ¥25 trillion ($281 billion) per year, since 2006. Certain trends have begun to appear in the Japanese market in response to this situation. Before the amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (FIEL) in 2012, despite the fact that syndicated loans arranged by financial institutions are generally not regulated under the FIEL, loan receivables from educational institutions are an exception to this general principle and regulated under the FIEL as 'deemed securities'. Accordingly, syndicated loans provided to these institutions have traditionally been considered as regulated under the FIEL and the arrangement of such loans considered a so-called Type II Financial Instruments Business, which carries with it many restrictions under the FIEL. Accordingly, even in situations where all of the lenders in the syndicate were sophisticated financial institutions the applicable FIEL protections were nonetheless applied, hindering the supply of financing and flow of funds in the market.

Lord Peter Goldsmith The former UK Attorney General has called for a more flexible form of deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) than that proposed by the UK government. For DPAs to be an effective enforcement tool, prosecutors must be able to offer agreeable terms and incentivise companies to self-report, Lord Peter Goldsmith told IFLR. This could be difficult under the stringent approval process the government proposes to introduce as early as next year.

Erik Lind On January 1 2013, the Peruvian Controlled Foreign Corporation Regime (Regime) entered into force. The Regime aims to prevent the deferral of Peruvian Income Tax (IT) on foreign source passive income – such as dividends, interest, royalties, and capital gains – earned by Peruvian Tax Residents (PTR) through the use of Controlled Foreign Corporations (CFC) located in low tax jurisdictions. A foreign entity qualifies as a CFC if, by the end of the Peruvian tax year (December 31) it satisfies the following criteria:

The government of Mongolia's recent Regulation S/Rule 144A debt offering marked the first time the country has tapped the sovereign bond market.