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Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised on Germany's first synthetic lease receivables securitization.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer won eight awards, including IFLR European Law Firm of the Year, at International Financial Law Review's awards dinner last night. The UK firm clinched the overall award for its work in capital markets, M&A, project finance and restructuring during 2002.

Harvey Pitt: ending on a high note As with many leaders, Securities and Exchange (SEC) chairman Harvey Pitt overcame his lame-duck position in his last days in office to make some final points. In one such move he put the banning of payment for order flows back on the agenda for his successor to look at once he has settled into his Washington DC office.

Hong Kong's securities watchdog is looking to crack down even harder on corporate crime and misconduct in 2003, backed by a new regulatory framework, the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO) that will soon take effect.

The EU is set to announce new legislation on disclosure, electronic voting rights and directors' salaries next month but has no plans to draw up a comprehensive corporate governance code for companies in EU's member states.

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.

In a strongly worded January 2003 report, the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations stated that, by the end of this year, the SEC and US bank regulators should take action to preclude abusive structured finance transactions. The report applauds the use of structured finance to lower funding costs and diversify risk (true asset securitizations) but virtually demands the termination of false liability securitizations. False securitizations attenuate risk and hide assets and liabilities from investor and regulatory scrutiny.

The Swiss Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) has issued an Ordinance concerning the Prevention of Money Laundering (December 18 2002). The Ordinance introduces stricter due diligence obligations in the case of higher risk business relationships. But in all other business relationships the standard identification procedure still prevails as contained in the revised Due Diligence Agreement (CDB 03) published by the Swiss Bankers Association on January 17 2003 (see www.swissbanking.org). The content of the Ordinance is similar to its draft version, released last summer and already summarized in IFLR (November 2002, Vol. XXI 11, p63). This report pinpoints three of the most significant changes between the draft and the final version and briefly presents the implementation schedule financial intermediaries must comply with.

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

The creation of a flexible security structure has enabled Indian company Bharti Tele-Ventures to tie-up international funding of $315 million - one of the largest-ever deals in the country's telecoms sector.