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A new Act allows Swedish mortgage lending institutions to issue covered bonds, providing them the same financing means as their EU counterparts. The Swedish parliament passed the Covered Bonds Act in late December 2003.

Simon Crompton analyzes the performances of the best securitization practices in last year's growing structured finance market

In January 2004 the Russian government issued a number of regulations clarifying the application of certain tax exemptions under the Production Sharing Agreements (PSA) regime. In particular, the government approved the list of documents that a PSA investor is required to file with the customs office in order to obtain customs exemptions and with the tax authorities to obtain property and transport tax exemptions. Although these exemptions originally provided for in Charter 26(4) of the Tax Code, their practical implementation to date was not possible as it was contingent upon further regulatory acts of the government.

The long-awaited new Bankruptcy Act was approved by the Finnish parliament on February 4 2004 and is expected to become effective over the next six months. The present Bankruptcy Act dates back to 1868 and has become outdated and - because of several partial amendments - difficult to understand. The purpose of the new Act is to enact a regulatory framework that is clear and foreseeable, enabling efficient and transparent bankruptcy proceedings.

Both voluntary and mandatory tender offers for companies listed in Denmark are regulated by the Danish Securities Trading Act and the Danish Securities Council's Executive Order on tender offers. Decisions and statements made by the Danish Securities Council and Copenhagen Stock Exchange form an important supplement to the regulations. There is no parallel to the UK yellow book.

The trust has always been regarded as one of the best succession vehicles, but using a trust to cater for the succession of shares in companies has historically been impeded by a rule of English trust law that is designed to help preserve the value of trust investments. This rule, which is known as the prudent-man-of-business rule, has traditionally made the trust an unattractive vehicle to hold assets that settlors intend trustees to retain. Another aspect of the rule effectively requires trustees to monitor and intervene in the affairs of underlying companies. This also creates difficulties both from the settlor's standpoint and from that of the trustees.

Hong Kong's debut Flexibond issue by BOC International shows how far the market for retail structured notes has come despite hazy securities laws. By Andrew Malcolm and Matthew Budden

The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has broken new ground with a private finance initiative (PFI) for one of its garrisons.

Linklaters has won the mandate for one of Hungary's first public-private partnership (PPP) projects financed without some form of guarantee.

Linklaters and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz are advising French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Synthelabo on its €46.2 billion ($58.9 billion) bid for rival drugmaker Aventis in one of Europe's largest ever hostile bids.