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Stephen Roith (Clifford Chance), Agnes Nardi (3HK) Clifford Chance's performance in Asia last year was impressive. Many clients, competitors and other market players that IFLR spoke to praised the quality and efficiency of the firm's work in particular. Some of the firm's most innovative deals came in greater China, as the lawyers created landmarks in the PRC in distressed assets (Silver Grant and Great Wall No 1) and M&A (Lenovo-IBM's personal computing division), structured a series of securitization and debt capital markets firsts in Hong Kong (the SAR government's debut global bond offering and Hong Kong Link), and set a debt financing benchmark in Macau (Wynn Resorts). The firm's equity lawyers were also busy, acting on the IPOs of Thai Oil, AirAsia and Yellow Pages in south-east Asia. Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia were also jurisdictions in which the firm added to its capital markets, restructuring, and project and structured finance achievements.

Ben Maiden reports on how lawsuits have failed to derail the Argentina debt exchange

Ian Sideris and Simon Puleston Jones ask whether credit default swaps in synthetic CDOs are becoming more commoditized and analyze the technical issues in swap documentation

Argentina might have set important precedents for sovereign debt deals, but big questions remain unanswered. Anna Gelpern explains

Daniel Whitehead explains what debt capital markets participants can learn from recent English law litigation over the responsibilities of trustees

To encourage mergers and acquisitions and thereby the restructuring of companies in Turkey, certain tax advantages to merging companies have been regulated under the relevant tax regulations. The banking crisis in 2001 has prompted the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA) to encourage restructuring of the banking system and strengthen the financial structure of banks by setting out certain benefits in its regulations for merging banks under the Regulation on the Merger and Acquisition of Banks (the Regulation).

The requirement to apply international financial reporting standards (IFRS) for any accounting period commencing on or after January 1 2005 has raised questions relating to whether the use of IFRS could result in accounting profits (and as a result taxable profits) appearing in the accounts of Irish structured finance special purpose vehicles (otherwise known as Section 110 Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 companies) where previously no such profits would have arisen.

The Danish Government has recently proposed a new form of charge over the assets of businesses. In English terms, the virksomhedspant would be recognized as a form of a fixed and floating charge. If introduced, the proposal could benefit financial institutions and corporations by simplifying the structure for taking security over assets of businesses. The vehicle would be a special mortgage deed registered in a public registry with reference to the assets (or, in a restricted form, to the portfolio of trade receivables). Previously, in Denmark, the regime for taking security required that individual assets be recognized and identified and the security over them established with reference to those particular assets.

The recent publication of the Implementing Regulations (Official Gazette (Umm Al-Qura) edition 4021) to the Capital Market Regulations (Royal Decree M/30, 2/6/1424H), has given rise to some uncertainty for prospective issuers in an increasingly active IPO market in the Kingdom.

For many observers, Argentina's debt restructuring has promised much and delivered little in terms of offering new solutions to future crises. Despite this, there are important lessons to be learned from the world's biggest sovereign exchange.