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Chinonyelum Uwazie The OECD estimates in its Infrastructure to 2030 Report (2007) that the annual infrastructure investment requirements for electricity, road and rail transport, telecommunications and water are likely to average around 3.5% of world GDP through to 2030. The report estimates that a large share of these investments will be taken in the developing world where countries such as China, India and Brazil will be spending billions of dollars on infrastructure to underpin their booming economies and satisfy the growing aspirations of their population. Nigeria is part of the developing world and is said to have one of the fastest growing economies in the African continent with over 140 million people and an average economic growth rate of 3.5% per year in the last few years. With such a thriving economy and an equally growing population comes the need for investments in areas such as electricity, road and rail transport as well as telecommunication. Recent projects at the federal and state level including the light rail mass transit project and the cable car transit project in Lagos State, Nigeria, are a testament to the efforts of the government to meet the growing needs of the population.

Nicholas Chang Linette Zhang Xiao Lin The Singapore central bank has proposed changes to the regulations of the Securities and Futures Act and Financial Advisers Act as part of its efforts to enhance and refine the country's regulatory framework. One of the key changes made by the central bank is the extension of the statutory obligations to ensure effective control and segregation of duties to mitigate conflicts of interest that may arise from the operations of a capital markets services (CMS) licence holder or a licensed financial adviser to the CMS licence holder or financial adviser, respectively. Under the present law, these statutory obligations are imposed on a director and chief executive officer of a CMS licence holder or a financial adviser only. The central bank found that the control failures are often not solely attributable to chief executive officers and directors. The proposed amendments therefore seek to extend these statutory obligations to CMS licence holders, together with their directors and senior management to ensure proper institutions and implementation of risk management and compliance systems.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was recently enacted in the Philippines in line with the State's recognition of the vital role of information and communications industries in the nation's overall social and economic development and the need to protect and safeguard computer systems and networks from all forms of misuse, abuse and illegal access.

A new law which focuses on the processing of an individual's personal information was approved by the President of the Philippines on August 15 2012. The Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No 10173, full title An Act Protecting Individual Personal Information in Information and Communications Systems in the Government and the Private Sector, Creating for this Purpose A National Privacy Commission, and for Other Purposes) took effect on September 8 2012. A violation of this law is a crime, and penalties imposed include fines and imprisonment (see Chapter VIII of the Act).

The nominees for IFLR’s 2013 Asia and Americas awards have been announced

The US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) 'Annual Report on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program: Fiscal Year 2012' reveals a programme that is still grappling with many difficulties, lawyers have said.