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Spain, like other Western economies, has been shaken in the past months by a number of events. Some, like the financial scandals affecting large multinational corporations, originated outside Spain's borders; others, like a clutch of acquisitions of controlling stakes in competitor companies avoiding public offer (OPA) regulations, have a more local flavour; still others, affecting the way in which managers receive their remuneration (stocks and stock options), are Spain's reflection and reinterpretation of management trends that started abroad.

On September 2 the Irish Competition Authority announced plans to conduct a study of competition in banking services in Ireland. The Authority has the power to study and analyze any practice or method of competition affecting the supply of goods or the provision of services or any other matter relating to competition pursuant to the Competition Act 2002. The Authority has previously investigated sectors such as bus and rail passenger transport and licensed publicans. It is now investigating the professions.

The Hungarian parliament recently amended the Media Act to harmonize it with the relevant EU directives. As a result, Hungary and the EU finally closed the accession negotiations of the audio-visual and cultural policy chapter.

The UK's market regulator is to develop a disclosure regime for short selling and is considering ways in which to set up a cost-efficient framework to measure this controversial practice.

The regulator of Dubai's newly-established financial hub has awarded formal mandates to three law firms to develop the commerce centre's legal framework.

German banks are turning to a set of software tools to help them implement forthcoming Basel II banking regulations and International Accounting Standards (IAS).

After months of corporate scandals over accounting irregularities, international and US standards-setters have begun a process to harmonize their rules and create a single global standard by 2005.

Some recent case law gives cause for concern regarding the tax deductibility in Belgium of expenses relating to put or call options on shares. This article will first briefly discuss the applicable principles and provisions as well as the case law. Subsequently, it will establish that the legal grounds of this case law are contestable and that it appears possible to circumvent this case law easily, so that expenses' relation to options on shares should still be tax deductible in Belgium. This article will not discuss the particular cases in which there can arise, in Belgium, such expenses with respect to options on shares.

Morgan Stanley has completed a Japanese conduit commercial mortgage-backed securitization, giving Allen & Overy's Tokyo-based US law practice its first completed deal.

Securitization specialists in the US are worried that recent proposals by the Financial Accounting Standards Board could damage the securitization market.