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Pursuant to the Competition Act, one or more undertakings acquiring direct or indirect control over another undertaking or other undertakings qualifies as a concentration and, if certain thresholds are met, is subject to the Competition Office's approval. However, the acquisition of temporary control does not qualify as a concentration and, thus, the Competition Office's approval is not required. This special rule was applied and further interpreted in a recent decision when FOTEX, a holding company acquired interest in FTC, a Hungarian football club.

In turbulent times banks must trust material adverse change clauses to protect them from unforeseen risk. Richard Gray, Patrick Holmes and Kevin Muzilla of Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy examine the relative merits of these different arrangements

Hengeler Mueller and Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton have advised on Deutsche Telekom's mandatory convertible bond, only the second to be issued in Germany.

The Chinese government has taken a step towards easing the country's bad debt burden by approving - for the first time - an onshore Sino-foreign joint venture to buy a portfolio of non-performing assets.

The launch of a collateralized loan obligation (CLO) that was 12 months in the making has created a template for asset-backed deals from Taiwan.

Canadian regulators are planning to clarify and toughen rules on insider reporting.

The statistics for 2002 published by the Capital Markets Board revealed a noteworthy growth in the number of foreign funds that entered the market. In fact, 19 different foreign funds' securities were issued last year, thus boosting the total number of foreign mutual funds with interests being traded in Turkey to 40 since 1997.

The potential bankruptcy of a Russian company has long troubled those investing in the country, as loopholes in the previous bankruptcy laws have led to the use of bankruptcy as a takeover device and other abuses. On December 3 2002, a new Law On Bankruptcy (Insolvency) took effect. In general, the new law is debtor-friendly and was drafted to stop abuses. However, it does not address all the existing problems and its effectiveness remains untested. Some of the noteworthy provisions of the new law are outlined below.

Certain amendments to Finland's Act on Credit Institutions (the ACI) and the Act on Investment Firms (the AIF) became effective on February 15 2003. The amendments mainly relate to improving banking and payment services as well as their availability. Although most amendments are mainly structural, they also include regulation on for example the use of agents in providing banking services, the right to receive repayable funds from customers and the right to basic banking services.

The recent admission of accounting irregularities at Ahold shows Sarbanes-Oxley is having a positive effect on audit and corporate governance standards.