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On March 15 2002, The Bahamas formally replied to the OECD Forum on harmful tax practices and issued a commitment to cooperate with the OECD in its harmful tax practices initiative. This initiative seeks transparency and exchange of information, on request, for tax purposes. The OECD proposes mechanisms and deadlines for achievement of these objectives, including a mechanism for the exchange of information relating to criminal tax offences by 2004, and civil tax defaults by 2006.

Japanese corporate governance is in the process of undergoing major reform. As part of this, amendments in the areas of directors` liability, derivative actions and corporate auditing will take effect on May 1 2002.

Taiwan's lawmakers are looking at proposals to allow the securitization of property, helping to increase activity in the real estate market.

As a reaction to China's accession to the World Trade Organization, new regulations have been introduced broadly classifying the projects in which foreign sponsors may or may not invest. The projects are listed in four categories: encouraged, permitted, restricted and prohibited. The new legislation appears in the Provisional Regulations for Guiding the Direction of Foreign Investment, and the Catalogue for Guiding Foreign Investment in Industries, effective from April 1 2002. These replace similar regulations dating from 1995 and 1997 respectively.

The EU's High Level Group of Company Law Experts has effectively advocated one share one vote across all types of risk bearing share capital. James Palmer of Herbert Smith explains why this will cause more harm than good to the European capital markets

Securitization specialists are carefully considering an announcement by Eurostat that it intends to change the way it looks at sovereign debt securitizations when drawing up country balance sheets.

In response to recent international agreements, proposed changes to Australia's anti-money-laundering laws will mean increased penalties for non-compliance and a broader range of obligations concerning reporting, investigations, property-tracking and disclosure.

Canada's courts have recently introduced new uncertainties to the country's mergers and acquisitions regime with decisions regarding the acquisition (by way of a plan of arrangement) of Pacifica Papers by Norske Skog Canada Limited. While almost 74% of Pacifica's shareholders voted in favour of the arrangement, the transaction was opposed by two minority shareholders (the dissident shareholders), which together held 20% of the shares.

Brazilian financial institutions can now enter into credit derivative agreements to transfer risks relating to credits to each other. These credits may be the result of loans, financing or lease contracts, securities, guarantees, credit derivatives or other financial or commercial contracts implying credit risks, negotiated on the domestic market. The financial institutions must make a commitment to keeping a technically-capable manager responsible for the credit derivatives before the Central Bank of Brazil. This comes about as a result of the Central Bank enacting Circular 3.106 regulating credit derivative transactions on April 10 2002. This had previously been authorized by the National Monetary Council's Resolution 2.933 of February 28 2002.

The UK's Company Law Review Steering Group (the Steering Group) has set out its final proposals for making the law regarding corporate governance – the duties of directors and shareholders and the balance of power between them – more precise and easier to understand, and has suggested areas in which the current position could be improved. Its main conclusions and recommendations in this area are dealt with below.