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Mian Muhammad Nazir The United Arab Emirates, particularly Dubai, has always been amongst the few most comfortable places for Islamic finance. It has received significant support from the Government, regulators and stakeholders. Yet despite the popularity of Islamic finance in the UAE, and UAE's contribution in the growth of Islamic finance, the legal and regulatory infrastructure has always needed further improvement in order to keep pace with the challenges of time and to further strengthen the confidence of the stakeholders in the Islamic finance industry. As expected, the latest initiatives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, have once again offered a remarkable degree of comfort to the industry. The initiatives will lead the UAE, and particularly Dubai, through a series of practical steps, which will pave the way for the growth of Islamic finance on a solid foundation. The proposed initiatives will entail industry specific and robust legal, judicial and regulatory reforms, which will provide a level playing field for the Islamic finance industry, to which it has been aspiring since its inception. What Islamic finance industry would certainly welcome is the review of Federal Law number 6 of 1985 regarding Islamic banks, financial institutions and investment companies.

In the United States, we've long distinguished between the requirements applicable to private offerings and those applicable to public offerings. In fact, there were clearly delineated lines that couldn't be crossed in the context of a private offering. A private offering was understood to be an offering made principally to institutional or sophisticated investors that had a pre-existing relationship with the issuer or the financial intermediary, and had access to financial or other information about the issuer. General solicitation was strictly forbidden, and the securities sold in unregistered offerings were subject to transfers restrictions such that they were not fungible with the issuer's securities trading on an exchange. Over time, the lines between private and public have become increasingly blurred. The rising popularity of hybrid offering techniques, like Pipe transactions, which have as their objective making privately offered securities more liquid and less private in character have contributed to this. Also, the holding period for restricted securities to become freely transferable has been shortened, and private secondary trading markets are becoming more important venues. Of course, the biggest changes to our first principles of securities regulation have been brought about by the JOBS Act, which permits general solicitation to be used, and permits social media and the internet to become capital raising tools for exempt offerings. So, it is easy to see that private offerings are becoming more, as it were, public.

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Russia's biggest ever public-private partnership (PPP) has closed, setting important precedents for structuring projects involving business and governments in the region.

The legal struggle over Argentina’s failure to pay holdout creditors has led the market to question if it is now time to tweak the historically obscure sovereign pari passu clause

Just three years after the crisis, it’s business as usual for Dubai. But as the emirate positions itself for an era of new growth, does the hype mask deeper-rooted problems?

Three banks have now settled claims over falsifying Libor rates. Here is a barrister’s view on the charges prosecutors could pursue

A lawyer acting on the Interbolsa liquidation speaks exclusively to IFLR about its impact on investors and its legacy for financial regulation