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By Evangelina Lardizábal of FA Arias & Muñoz

The Swiss parliament is considering two bills that will update Swiss corporation law: one revises the Swiss Code of Obligations (the CO) regarding audits and one introduces the Swiss Federal Act on Admission and Supervision of Auditors. These two bills reflect recent international developments in the field of corporate governance.

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.

The European Commission is considering imposing more comprehensive price disclosure on the bond markets. Michael Evans assesses the UK regulator's attempt to set the agenda for the debate

Bankruptcy laws and blame are inextricably linked. When a company goes bust, people lose money, fingers are pointed and blame apportioned. For public companies especially, the difficult art of value preservation comes into play, while investors demand answers as to what went wrong. Often management takes the fall, as is only correct as they are the stewards of companies, but the real work in keeping a company alive or fairly dividing assets is a long and arduous job, hampered by the lack of harmonization among insolvency regimes around the world.

Antonio Di Pasquale, Lovells Lovells appointed corporate partner Antonio di Pasquale to its Rome office. Pasquale, previously a partner at Pavia e Ansaldo, joins with a team of three other lawyers from his previous firm. He is a specialist in corporate and debt restructuring, joint ventures, initial public offerings (IPOs) and corporate governance, and is the second partner to join Lovell's Italian practice this year, following the election of Francesco Curreli in May 2005.

Slovenian competition law consists of two distinct independent regulatory frameworks. The Prevention of the Restriction of Competition Act (the Competition Act) prohibits restrictive agreements and the abuse of a dominant position and, while the rules on unfair competition aim to prevent behaviour that violates the principle of fairness when performing business activities (the Protection of Competition Act, or the Competition Act 1993).

After negotiations with the EU in 2004, the Romanian parliament recently enacted a new capital markets law, Law 297/2004 (the Capital Markets Law). Previously, the legal provisions regulating capital markets in Romania and undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (Ucits) differed materially from their counterparts in the EU. Moreover, the regulations were often contradictory and were difficult to interpret correctly.

On July 1 2005, the new law of June 21 2005 (the Law) came into force, implementing the EC Directive 2003/48/EC of June 3 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments. The Directive aims to make savings income, in the form of interest payments made by a paying agent in one member state of the EU to beneficial owners who are individuals resident in another member state, subject to effective taxation. Dependent and associated territories of the EU and some non-EU jurisdictions (such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, San Marino) have also adopted equivalent measures.

Jersey is moving towards an overhaul of its fiscal policy, which will allow locally owned companies to enjoy the same zero rate of income tax as foreign-owned companies.