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The SEC's amendments to Rules 144 and 145 became effective last month, and lawyers are torn between whether they will make a difference in the US market.

Investors, like poker players, will be asked to invest in deals blind As the financial world dives deeper into a bear market, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (Spacs) look to be replacing permanent capital listings.

US practice broken in credit crisis panic

In the aftermath of SocGen, a UK case on keeping control of your stockbrokers

The industry waits to see what Europe will come up with in new regulation

They are enforceable in China. Don't pay any attention to what your counterparty says

Unwieldy rules are holding back 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.

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.

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.