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The Ministry of National Economy has unveiled draft legislation setting out the framework for corporate bonds and securitization operations. The purpose of the new rules is to modernize existing legislation on bond issuance and provide Greek companies with new sources of funding. While the government itself has made some use of securitization in recent years, existing legal rules are quite unfavourable, as far as corporates are concerned. The draft attempts to correct this situation by providing a new set of regulations on the issuance of bonds backed by assets, including real estate and monetary claims against third parties, by Greek societe anonymes, as well as some necessary tax relief. New rules on issuing bonds are also proposed, at a time when the use of debt as a means of raising capital is being encouraged by the Athens Exchange and the Ministry of National Economy. It will become possible to issue bonds following a decision to do so by a company's board of directors, rather than needing a shareholders' decision as before.

The Securities and Exchange Law of Japan does not generally require any company to report quarterly business results and financial condition. Although certain listed companies voluntarily disclose financial results on a quarterly basis, only companies with their securities listed on certain markets for emerging companies, such as Mothers on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), are required to file quarterly disclosure statements under the regulations of the relevant stock exchanges.

The cold winds of corporate scandal and tightening securities regulation are blowing north from the US. Ben Maiden reports on how Canada is trying to keep its own identity, at its own pace

Clifford Chance has advised on a €6.6 billion ($6.78 billion) real estate securitization for the Italian government.

Hong Kong has joined the growing number of jurisdictions where synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are becoming popular.

The launch of Korea's first hybrid tier one issue has opened the way for what some observers predict could be a $3 billion market over the next 12 months.

By Thomas Williams

Heavily-indebted European companies could find themselves unable to tap international equity markets for extra funds as the result of a US-style corporate action brought against a UK company. The case was awaiting a ruling as IFLR went to press.

The past six months have seen the successful completion of the first rated collateralized fund obligations. Shlomo Twerski, Paul Watterson and David Nissenbaum of Schulte Roth & Zabel explain how to structure this new financial product

On July 14 2002 the Turkish Competition Board issued a new communiqué, mainly in line with the European Commission Block Exemption Regulation, on the group exemption of vertical agreements, replacing previous communiqués on group exemptions of exclusive distribution agreements, exclusive purchasing agreements and franchise agreements. Agreements benefiting from the previous group exemption communiqués must now comply with the provisions of the new communiqué by July 14 2003 to be exempted from the application of the relevant article of the Law on Protection of Competition regarding the prohibition of concerted practices resulting in the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in a market for goods and services.