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Law firms in Australia and New Zealand are meeting the onslaught of competition from professional services firms by trimming and streamlining services. The trend is towards a high-tech, highly specialized and user friendly law firm. Morgan Acker reports

A new Company Law is expected to replace and substantially change the provisions of the Commercial Code that relate to companies. Certain substantial changes related to the stock system are:

Article 1, Paragraph 68 of Law 311 of December 30 2004 (the 2005 financial law) regulates for the first time recourse by local authorities to lines of credit.

The Greek parliament recently approved Law 3310/2005 on measures to secure transparency and to prevent circumvention upon conclusion of public contracts, which applies to the procedure for the conclusion and performance of public contracts and is known as the Law on Substantial Shareholders. A substantial shareholder for the purposes of the Law is any natural person or legal entity, that: (a) holds 1% of the company's share capital or voting rights; (b) irrespective of its holdings, belongs to the 10 greater shareholders of a company because of its participation in the company's share capital or the number of voting rights that it holds; (c) is entitled to appoint or recall one member of the board of directors; (d) has concluded, either directly or indirectly, contracts with the company that yield income greater that one tenth of the company's gross income in the previous fiscal year.

Fairness opinions in France usually play a minor role in tender offers. That is about to change, thanks to a new set of recommendations. Eric Cafritz, James Gillespie and Jean-Florent Rérolle explain

The central government has allowed 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) under the automatic route through Press Note 2 effective from March 3 2005, issued by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion SIA (FC Division) in townships, housing, built-up infrastructure and construction development projects including housing, commercial premises, hotels, resorts, hospitals, educational institutions, recreational facilities, city and regional level infrastructure under the following conditions:

The securities industry will gain a more effective voice when three of its main trade associations combine later this year, and well that voice is needed.

Equity capital markets

With its debut Eurobond listing, Switzerland's stock exchange demonstrated that it is a contender for a share of the $5 trillion market. Michael Evans explains

Jim Bartos and Peter King discuss why and how non-US companies are seeking to deregister from the SEC