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The Financial Services and Markets Act provides a simple way to reorganize banks. John Odgers, a barrister from 3 Verulam Buildings, London, answers key questions about how the process works

Unlike the legislation in most other European jurisdictions, the Swedish Companies Act or any other similar piece of Swedish legislation does not specifically address public offers and other forms of corporate takeovers. Even though the regulation on takeovers in Sweden underlies statutory law, the Swedish securities market is highly influenced by self-regulatory recommendations. The main source of information regarding takeovers is the Recommendation concerning Public Offers for the Acquisition of Shares issued by the Swedish Industry and Commerce Stock Exchange Committee (NBK). Stock market companies that are listed on the Stockholm Exchange are obliged to enter into a listing agreement with the Stockholm Exchange, of which a number of NBK-recommendations are made part. Consequently, non-listed companies are not contractually bound by the recommendations. Failure to comply with the requirements in the takeover regulation would result in bad feeling and criticism from the Swedish securities Council (Sw. Aktiemarknadsnämnden) and Swedish media and, in the case of a listed company, the Stockholm Exchange might decide to de-list the company's shares from the exchange.

Portugal will soon have a legal diploma foreseeing and regulating undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (Ucits) under statute through the form of securities investment companies with variable capital (SICAV) and securities investment companies with fixed capital (SICAF).

Two main principles were set out by the legislator at the time of the recent enactment of Law 130/1999 on securitization: the exclusive object of a securitization vehicle must be to enter into securitization transactions; and the receivables of each transaction must represent assets segregated from the vehicle's own assets and from those of other securitizations which may be entered into by the same vehicle.

The Irish Finance Bill 2003 was published on February 6 2003 and contains the long-awaited beneficial changes to the existing Irish securitization legislation. The intention behind the changes (which come into force with immediate effect) is to make Ireland the jurisdiction of choice for the location of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for structured finance transactions.

The State Development Commission (SDC) and the Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) have jointly promulgated Interim Measures on the Administration of Foreign Debts. The new Measures, which were enacted on January 8 will be effective from March 1 2003.

In September 2002 the British Virgin Islands government introduced amendments to the Insurance Act 1994 to create a regime for the registration and regulation of segregated portfolio companies (SPCs) (known in some other jurisdictions as protected cell companies). The Insurance (Amendment) Act 2002 (the Amendment Act) was introduced following a perceived demand from the international insurance market and is designed primarily to facilitate so called rent-a-captive operations, aimed to assist companies that are too small to form a captive insurance company of their own. (The Amendment Act and the Insurance Act 1994, are collectively referred to in this briefing simply as the Act).

Hungary has recently adopted several amendments to Act CXII of 1996 on credit institutions (the Banking Act) and Act CXX of 2001 on capital markets (CMA). The Acts provide an integrated legal framework for the activities of financial and investment service providers and their supervision. The changes were triggered by comments from market participants and practitioners and also by the EU accession requirements.

Falling stock markets have led to a string of M&A deals putting unprecedented strain on public bid regulations in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Thomas Williams reports

Scandinavian telecoms operator Song Networks has restructured its $550 million high-yield bonds, the first bond restructuring of a Swedish-listed company.