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The FSA tries to clarify its position

Hubert Bazin and David Boitout of Gide Loyrette Nouel outline how China is handling strategic foreign investment in PRC listed companies

The Vietnamese banking sector is becoming increasingly attractive to foreign investors, especially with the prospect that shares will be issued in the main state-owned commercial banks. However, access to the banking sector by foreign investors through equity acquisitions in existing banks is still highly regulated.

The SEC recently announced proposals to improve capital formation for smaller public companies. In some respects, these proposals pick up where securities offering reform left off. Securities offering reform modified the registration, communication and offering process – bringing regulation more in line with market realities. The largest public companies, well-known seasoned issuers (WKSIs), benefited the most from those changes. The new proposals expand the eligibility requirements for the use of a short-form registration statement (Form S-3), simplify the reporting requirements for small business issuers (creating a new issuer category: smaller reporting companies), and make scaled or reduced disclosure requirements available to these smaller reporting companies.

The new Corporate Income Tax Act entered into force in January 2007. It stipulates that companies must withhold taxes at a rate of 15% for distributed dividend and interest issued to residents and non-residents of Slovenia. If international treaties on the avoidance of double taxation stipulate a tax rate other than 15%, the treaty's tax rate applies. Slovenia has such treaties with several different countries and the withholding tax on interest varies between 5% (in Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland and The Netherlands) and 10% (in the UK).

Real estate funds were only recently introduced into Slovak law, but already the act that covers these funds, the Act on Collective Investment, has been amended. Effective from May 1 2007 the amendment has introduced several big changes.

On June 29 2007, the Norwegian government adopted a new Securities Trading Act and a new Stock Exchange Act, implementing the EU's Mifid, Transparency and Takeover Directives. The new acts bring about substantial changes to prevailing law. The acts will, with the exception of certain provisions, enter into force on November 1 2007 and will replace the Securities Trading Act of June 19 1997 and the Stock Exchange Act of November 17 2000.

A new Regulation on the Administration of Futures Trading aims to set up a centralized supervision system on the futures markets, including the commodity futures market and the financial futures markets.

The way of the future

Dual-tracks are now the norm