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Austria has had a corporate governance code in place since 2002. Albert Birkner and Clemens Hasenauer of Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati explain how the regime works

Neil Cummings and Martin Zohn explain why, to the relief of lenders, the controversial Owens Corning ruling has been overturned

International banks and corporations with dealings in Italy should take notice of new precedents that require them to have tough controls to prevent employees from committing financial crimes, say Raffaele Rizzi and Nadia Rahman

Japanese companies have faced various stages of corporate governance reform since 2001. Hiroki Kodate and Norifumi Takeuchi of Anderson Mori & Tomotsune highlight the changes

Courts in the US have generally recognized solvent schemes set up in the UK, but that might change due to the new round of bankruptcy reforms. By Joe Bannister and Alexander Wood

David Leinwand explains why directors can take some comfort from the recent ruling over Disney's handling of the Michael Ovitz affair

It is commonplace to find credit information bureaus in Europe, but it is a recent phenomenon (for obvious reasons) in emerging markets. The Bank of Tanzania has only recently decided to follow the example of its neighbour, Kenya, and open discussions with its advisers to put a legal and regulatory framework in place for credit information sharing in Tanzania. In 2001, legislation came into force that enabled the Minister for Finance to make regulations whereby the Central Bank of Kenya and any other institutions licensed under the Banking Act could exchange information on their respective customers. These regulations were formalized in 2004.

The government of Serbia has recently proposed a new Takeover Act to more effectively regulate takeovers. The proposed Takeover Act, which is modelled on the EC Takeover Directive (Directive 2004/25/EC), incorporates the main principles of the Directive – the equivalent treatment of all shareholders, the provision of information so that shareholders can make informed decisions, the duty of management to act in the interests of the target as a whole, the prevention of false markets and market distortion, the duty of a bidder to secure funding before making an offer, and requiring the takeover to be carried out quickly to prevent damaging the target's business. The Takeover Law has been presented to the parliament and should be enacted by the end of 2005.

There is no mutual fund industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This is partly a result of the underdeveloped economy, but the current legislative framework addresses itself to financial products that the BiH economy is not yet ready to support. It could be that generalization of the legislation could assist in developing the market for personal investment products.

On August 26 2005, the Ministry of Finance & Economy of Korea (Mofe) announced its tax-reform proposals including anti-tax-haven rules. If approved by the National Assembly later this year, the proposed changes are expected to take effect in January 2006.