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Law 311 of December 30 2004, which is the Financial Law for 2005 (the 2005 Financial Law), provides for new limits to capacity of Italian local authorities to enter into loans and bonds.

The Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA) plans to establish a new law to regulate financial products and services. Although the details of the law are not yet decided, it is expected to regulate investment services in similar fashion to the UK's Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

Extortive challenges to shareholders' resolutions might soon end, as Germany prepares a new stockholder law. Konstantin Günther and Barbara Roth explain why reform can't come soon enough

BUPA: keeping its finances healthy BUPA Finance in December 2004 issued £330 million ($621 million) in subordinated perpetual bonds. The issue by the UK healthcare provider is the first deal involving upper Tier 2 bonds to give the issuer unlimited discretion to defer interest payments. Slaughter and May advised BUPA Finance and BUPA Insurance, while Allen & Overy advised HSBC and ABN AMRO as lead managers.

Germany's financial regulator has proposed guidelines explaining how public companies should interpret the increased disclosure and market abuse obligations created by German implementation of the EU's Market Abuse Directive in November 2004.

Allen & Overy has finished top of Dealogic's global project finance review for the third time in four years. The firm closed 51 deals worth over $15 billion in 2004, taking a 9.3% share of the market.

One of Boston's most prominent venture capital law firms, Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault, will shut down following a vote by its partnership in mid-January. The firm pointed to the departure of 10 partners in early December and its subsequent failure to secure a merger, despite holding talks with various firms, as the reasons behind the decision to dissolve the remaining partnership. "A law firm such as ours, although prominent, profitable and filled with talented lawyers is - like any professional services organization - knit of a fabric that, if stretched too thin, can unravel," said managing partner George Davitt. A player in the Boston legal market for 30 years, Testa Hurwitz has been well known for its work in venture capital and private equity, including a fund formation practice.

The Bank of Thailand (BoT) is publishing a reference rate for short-term interest rates, called the Bangkok Interbank Offered Rate (Bibor). Bibor is the rate of interest at which banks can borrow funds from other banks in the Bangkok interbank market.

Companies outside the US are taking action to avoid rules that would compel many of them to register with the SEC. Dan Andrews reports

Saudi Arabia has set up a new regulatory regime for registering interests in real property and related transactions. The Law for Registration of Real Property (the Law) was published on May 18 2002 and became effective one year later. Currently, interests in real property and related transactions (for example, transfers of ownership, mortgages, the creation of Waqfs (similar to the Western concept of trusts) with respect to real property and bequeathing real property through wills) are registered with notaries in special registers maintained for this purpose. Under the Law, new real property registers (the Registers) will be set up jointly by the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. The Registers will be maintained and administrated the Department of Real Property Registration, a department of the Ministry of Justice. The Law requires all real property interests and transactions to be recorded in the Register, failing which no real property interest or transaction will have legal effect as to third parties. The Law further provides that lease agreements with terms exceeding five years will not be effective as to third parties for the period exceeding the first five years of the lease term unless they are recorded in the Registers.