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Effie Vasilopoulos joined the Hong Kong office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood at the start of August to launch a new international funds practice for the firm in Asia.

One of the few remaining items on the agenda of harmonization of the Czech legal system with the acquis communitaire is a package of legislation regulating capital markets and collective investment. The core of this package consists of the Act on Undertaking on Capital Markets and the Act on Collective Investment, which are both prepared in draft form and are expected to be submitted formally to parliament soon, with a view to being adopted on or before May 1 2004 (the anticipated date of EU accession).

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) voted in August to remove some of the restrictions on companies wanting to delist, offering the prospect of greater movement between exchanges.

Whether Hong Kong can compete for a share of Asia's rapidly growing market for real estate investment trusts will depend on how the new Reit regulations are applied, say Dean Lockhart and Graham Turl of Linklaters

Instead of creating a clear roadmap for M&A in China, new rules have made doing deals more complicated and confusing for foreign investors. Doubts now over how the regulations will be enforced is creating even more uncertainty, reports Andrew Crooke

Zest Investments II has shown the way forward for managed collateralized debt obligations in Japan. Paul Cluley and Benjamin Pynt of Allen & Overy, Tokyo, reveal how the deal balances the added complexity of having a managed portfolio with simplified cashflows and a greater transparency of risk

The signing of the $4.3 billion Nanhai petrochemicals project in China took place on August 1, marking the largest-ever Sino-foreign joint venture project financing.

The Brazilian Securities Commission (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários or CVM) has adopted regulations that give investment firms greater flexibility in establishing the investment policies and corporate governance arrangements of private equity funds. The new rules, adopted on July 16 2003, address the need for an enabling regulatory framework that could accommodate certain typical features of a private equity or mezzanine fund.

In 2002 the Cayman Islands government proposed legislation to regulate investment business carried out in or from the Cayman Islands. The Securities Investment Business Law (2003 Revision) became fully effective on July 29 2003. Any person in the Cayman Islands conducting securities investment business as defined in the new law must now be licensed by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (Monetary Authority), unless that person is exempt. Those persons conducting investment business covered by the legislation have a period of six months to apply to the Monetary Authority for a licence, or file for an exemption from licensing.

Allen & Overy has taken a big step towards increasing its share of distressed debt work across Asia by hiring Ian Johnson from Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy in Hong Kong.