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Although a new law creating Italian covered bonds could prove restrictive, Marco Lantelme argues that some banks may begin issuing them by the end of the year

Alexander Cohen warns of the impact of Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley on non-US companies

The recent Paul Davidson case shows how badly the FSA needs to make its enforcement reform work, says Philip Parish

Although with its recent recodifications Ukrainian law has developed into a generally satisfactory legal system, some significant problems remain. In particular, Ukrainian law imposes a number of drafting requirements applicable for loan, credit and similar agreements between foreign lenders and Ukrainian borrowers (hereafter, loan agreements) that are unusual and that, unless satisfied, risk causing the invalidation of loan agreements with foreign lenders. Two such important special requirements are that an agreement between a foreign lender and a Ukrainian borrower must be in the Ukrainian language as well as the language of the lender, and any such agreement must contain an express clause on its duration.

The new Slovenian law on information society services, as stipulated in the Electronic Commerce in the Market Act, recently entered into force and fully adopts into Slovenian law EU Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce, thereby correcting deficiencies in the current Electronic Commerce and Electronic Signature Act and the Consumer Protection Act. The new Commerce in the Market Act eliminates the shortcomings of the current regime, which does not sufficiently regulate relations in electronic commerce between contracting parties who are not consumers. The latter could not rely on adequate legal certainty under the old law.

On May 30 2006, the Serbian president signed into law the Takeover Act (Official Herald of the Republic of Serbia, 46/06), the first systematized legislation in Serbia of takeovers. The Act came into force on June 10 2006.

On April 7 2006, the Norwegian Ministry of Justice forwarded a white paper suggesting several amendments to the act relating to private limited liability companies (aksjeselskaper or AS) and the act relating to public limited liability companies (allmennaksjeselskaper or ASA). The most important proposals are:

Recently adopted changes to the civil law of Latvia transpose the requirements of EU Directive 2000/35/EC on combating late payment in commercial transactions. Previously if the interest rate was not determined by the loan contract, it was considered that the interest rate set by law had been implicitly agreed to. Also, in other kind of agreements if the rate of interest was not determined, it was deemed that contracting sides had agreed on the interest rate set by law, determined as 6%, which had not been changed since 1937 when the civil law was adopted.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MOCT) in Korea announced the proposed amendments to the existing Real Estate Investment Company Law (Reits Law) on June 13 2006. The main purpose of the amendment is to streamline the process of establishing a Reit and to relax regulations on its business operations in order to reinvigorate indirect investments in real estate in Korea. If the amendments are approved by the National Assembly, it is expected that they will be effective as of 2007. Some of the main terms of the amendments are as follows:

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