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On July 1 2004 the new Swedish Financial Advice Consumers Act will enter into force. The act has been established on the basis that there is a need for special consumer protection legislation regarding financial advice and will apply to financial advice that a business provides to a consumer and that involves the placement of a consumer's assets in financial instruments (for example shares, fund units and bonds) or in life assurance where the capital is placed in financial instruments selected by the consumer itself (so-called unit-linked policies). Compliance with the act is mandatory for undertakings providing financial advice to consumers.

Entering into an arbitration agreement, the parties sometimes provide for various alternatives. This happens quite often for example in loan contracts between Russian borrowers and UK based international financial institutions. In an attempt to bargain a favorable position in jurisdictional terms, the lender may want to reserve its right to go to a court of law. This is usually attained by supplementing the arbitration agreement with such opportunity, that is, by specifying that besides the option of having their dispute arbitrated the parties may initiate legal proceedings in, say, a UK court. Pursuing this bargaining path, the lender may also seek that a borrower unilaterally waive its right to challenge the jurisdiction chosen by the lender in case of a dispute. However, a lender should carefully exploit its bargaining power, since not all options will necessarily be viable.

Three Spanish banks have successfully securitized a new class of asset-backed notes, creating a legal and transactional framework for Spanish electricity companies to securitize revenues from customer bills.

To avoid the domino effect of a corporate failure, Australia may become the first common law jurisdiction to enact legislation depriving claimants of the right to uncapped damages. By Tessa Hoser, Nicholas Seddon and Paul Jenkins

Norway's Findexa will be the first company to issue high-yield dividend shares, known in the US as income depositary securities (IDSs), to Europe later this month.

Three banking associations have published guidance clarifying how firms should comply with new UK rules governing conflicts of interest on securities offerings.

The Basel Committee has agreed a final version of the new accord on capital adequacy, which will give banks more control over how they plan for and mitigate investment risk. But some aspects of the accord, known as Basel II, may have negative effects on the securitization market, according to lawyers familiar with the agreement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued new proposals that will make it easier for non-US issuers of asset-backed securities to access the US capital markets. Under the new rules issuers outside America would for the first time be able to issue asset-backed securities via a so-called shelf registration statement.

China's trust law provides a means for using securitization to help reduce the country's number of non-performing loans, say Evan Cohen, Mary Matson and Paul Chu

The UK Takeover Panel has reversed the stance it took in WPP/Tempus in 2001, which reduced the utility of material adverse change clauses. Tunde Ogowewo explains how