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A new Act has significantly amended Ukraine's corporate profit tax regime, effectively decreasing the overall tax burden and eliminating many ambiguities thought responsible for conflicts with tax authorities (Act of Ukraine No 349-IV, effective January 1 2003). The main effects of the new Act are as follows:

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.

In a recent case, a company domiciled and taxable in France owned the entire share capital of a company domiciled in Geneva. The Swiss subsidiary was solely set up to hold and administer securities and as such benefited from the so-called holding company privilege, a favourable tax status accorded by both the Federal and Cantonal tax laws. However, under the French Tax Code, section 209B (Controlled Foreign Company Rules or CFC rules), a French company's share in the income of a company domiciled abroad, in which the former holds a participation either of 10% or more or with a value of at least €22.8 million ($24.3 million), is added, for tax purposes, to its domestic (French) income, provided that the foreign company enjoys a privileged tax treatment at its domicile.

Douglas Bartner, Michael Bosco, James Garrity and Stacey Spevak of Shearman & Sterling explain how Grapes became the first foreign company with minimal assets in the US to achieve restructuring under Chapter 11

In a significant development for Georgian tax legislation, the president of Georgia on April 19 2002 approved instructions outlining detailed procedures for the registration of taxpayers and the maintenance of a tax registry at district, zonal and regional levels (Decree 155). The instructions include forms to be filled out at the time of registration, reorganization or liquidation, and call for the collection of extensive information on taxpayers.

Japanese legal procedures relating to insolvency are undergoing substantial reform. As a part of these reforms, many amendments to the Corporate Reorganization Law were promulgated on December 13 2002 and are scheduled to take effect on April 1 2003. The pre-amendment Corporate Reorganization Law provided a very rigid reorganization procedure, especially for large-scale companies with many creditors, employees and other stakeholders. The main purposes of the amendments are to create a swift reorganization procedure for companies and to establish more flexible reorganizing measures.

The revision of the exemption regulation that has caused problems for borrowers (see main feature) has also affected securititizations, putting billions of dollars of transactions temporarily at risk.

Life for foreigners issuing securities in The Netherlands has been made more difficult by a recent amendment to the law. Michael Evans reports on what lawyers are doing to change this

France's stock market regulator, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (Cob) is to make an in-depth analysis of deals structured using derivatives to raise capital.

Clifford Chance securitization partner Luigi Chessa is leaving the firm's Rome office after six months as joint-managing partner for Italy.