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Equity Latham & Watkins represented ReneSola in its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange. ReneSola is a leading Chinese manufacturer of solar wafers. Shearman & Sterling advised the underwriters.

In our last column (Tax disputes, IFLR December 2007) we discussed the battle brewing over the US federal income tax treatment of exchange-traded notes (ETNs). Since then the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the US Treasury Department have published Revenue Ruling 2008-1 and Notice 2008-2 and new legislation has been introduced in the US House of Representatives by Congressman Neal, all addressing the US federal income tax treatment of certain ETNs. As discussed in our previous column, most ETNs are treated as prepaid forward contracts rather than debt instruments under law. As such, investors generally adopt wait-and-see taxation – that is, they do not report income or gains until the ETNs are sold.

The law applicable to cross-border public offers has been a cause of uncertainty among Romanian capital markets practitioners. Under Romanian international private law principles, the issuer's national law governs the acquisition of shares. On the other hand, practitioners considered that since such shares were to be distributed in Romanian territory, Romanian capital markets rules should also apply to a certain extent.

Under Decree-Law 193/2005, in force since January 1 2006, investment income and capital gains arising from debt instruments issued by Portuguese entities are exempt from Portuguese income tax as long as the beneficiaries (i) have no residence, head office, effective management or permanent establishment in Portugal to which the income is attributable, (ii) are not domiciled in a blacklist jurisdiction, and (iii) are non-resident entities not held, directly or indirectly, in more than 20% by Portuguese residents.

Companies (Amendment) Act 2007 The Companies (Amendment) Act 2007 (CA 2007) came into force on August 15 2007 and some of the more significant amendments introduced are discussed below.

Chinese counsel seem locked in a game of Fischer's Rules chess. This alternative version of the game, invented by precocious champion Bobby Fisher, switched all the major chess pieces around randomly. He was tired of players memorising opening moves, and wanted to test how good players were if they didn't know where they were starting from. Which is exactly the position of Chinese companies trying to buy overseas.

Public-private partnership (PPP) projects have existed for many years in European countries such as the UK, France, Italy and Spain. In the Nordic region, PPP projects have been carried out in Finland and Norway. In Sweden, though, there has been only one genuine PPP project – the railway between the centre of Stockholm and Arlanda Airport. The main reason for the slow progress is that Sweden has a strong tradition of public responsibility for services such as hospitals and prisons, and also for infrastructure. Various social democratic governments, which have been in power for many years, have upheld this tradition. But since the election in Sweden in September 2006 the four centre right parties have formed a new government. It has a far more positive attitude towards private financing and supply of services and facilities traditionally financed and supplied by the public sector, though no concrete decision to start a Swedish PPP scheme has been made. The new government has appointed a joint working group comprising representatives from the Swedish Road Administration (SRA), the Swedish Rail Administration (Banverket) and the Nordic Road and Transport Research (VTI) to analyse the legal, financial and technical prerequisites for PPP in the road and rail sectors. The joint working group's report was published in June 2007. No specific PPP legislation is in force in Sweden and none is planned. But in the report, the legal analysis focused on the legal consequences of a proposed Swedish PPP model for road and railroad investments and how the Swedish Public Procurement Act could affect the procurement of PPP infrastructure projects.

A recent amendment to the South African Companies Act has set structured financiers atwitter. The Corporate Laws Amendment Act 24 of 2006, which came in to effect on December 14 2007, has changed the South African corporate landscape. The amendment to section 38 in particular has opened the door to new structuring possibilities.

Recently, Slovenia passed so-called anti-tycoon legislation, which restricts certain acquisition financings. The changes affect banking law, takeover law, and corporate law.

On February 1 2008, an amendment to Article 71 of the Mexican Credit Institutions Law (Ley de Instituciones de Crédito, CIL) was enacted to clarify the law on documentary credits in Mexico.