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Canada's largest law firm has acted for the banks in the biggest syndicated financing in eastern Europe.

Davis Polk advises on $180 million secondary offering

The European Securitisation Forum has added its voice to those questioning proposed changes to international accounting standards. Rob Mannix reports

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has admitted that tough deadlines for implementing Sarbanes-Oxley mean the regulator has little time to consider exemptions for foreign issuers.

October 2002 marked the first anniversary of the proclamation of Canada's Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act. The Act makes fundamental changes in the areas of financial institution ownership, investment, operations, corporate governance, consumer protection, and foreign bank branch regulation, thereby potentially having significant influence on the business decisions of Canada's financial institutions. New ownership regimes mean banks and insurance companies are now categorized according to size based on shareholder equity. New rules permit expanded interests to be held in Canadian financial institutions. In addition, regulated, non-operating bank and insurance holding companies may be established.

The Colombian Supreme Court of Justice (Corte Suprema de Justicia) has carried out an analysis of the legal nature and characteristics of performance bonds between private parties (by means of Decision No 6785 of May 2 2002). In the Decision, the court established that the bonds were initially regulated by Law 225 of 1938 which set out the legal regime for management and performance bonds with the purpose of assuring compliance with obligations derived from laws or contracts. Law 225, in the opinion of the court, is still in force. The bonds are generally conceived as an insurance by which a creditor is covered against any economic loss that may derive from the eventual breach of their debtor's obligations, transferring such risk to a third party (an insurance company) which assumes it as its own obligation in exchange for the payment of a premium.

Twenty-four of the most prominent law firms in the US have united to issue a consensus view on the proper application of Section 402 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which bans companies from giving directors and executive officers personal loans.

Regulators have already released proposals on implementing the prospectus directive, though the directive itself is not yet ready.

In the second of two articles, Tim Lester, Mohammed Asaria and Udo van der Linden consider the future for asset-backed finance in Korea and Taiwan as both countries strive to learn from the progress of neighbouring Japan

Australian banks have less than a year to comply with the country’s new code of practice. Ros Grady reports