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Under listing rule changes proposed by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), due to be implemented in June 2002, it will be harder for foreign companies to be listed on the ASX with special relief. Foreign companies already listed by the ASX would have only a few months to adapt to the new rules.

In a recent decision regarding the battle for Australia’s Normandy Mining, the Takeovers Panel made its first decision on break fees and has released its reasoning. Baden Furphy and Tony Damian of Freehills’ Melbourne and Sydney offices discuss the ruling and its implications

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has hired former Shearman & Sterling partner Stephen Mostyn-Williams to build a dedicated banking and finance practice in Europe.

In a landmark ruling, the SEC has allowed American Life to communicate with investors purely via the internet. However, as Sebastian Sperber and Eric Kolodner of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Hong Kong explain, it is far from clear where this will lead or what the effects of the Electronic Signatures Act will be

An offeror in a recent Canadian take over bid demonstrated ingenuity in squeezing out dissenting offerees in a new second step transaction designed to take the target private.

The New Zealand government is in the process of a major reform of the country's securities law. The reform is a three-stage process, consisting of the enactment of a Takeovers Code, the introduction of a Securities Markets and Institutions Bill and a review of securities trading law. The first stage of the law reform package, the introduction of a Takeovers Code, was completed in July 2001 and the second, the introduction of the Securities Markets and Institutions Bill, is underway. (Buddle Findlay has commented on each of these developments in previous issues of IFLR.) The third of the trinity of reforms will be a comprehensive review of securities trading law. In a speech to a commercial law conference, the Minister of Commerce, Paul Swain, recently outlined the scope of the review and reiterated the direction of future securities law reform.

Jersey off tax haven list

Bond market participants are calling for European securities regulators to drop plans for electronic trading systems regulation. In a detailed response to revised proposals published for consultation by the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR), the Bond Market Association (TBMA) said that moves to regulate the e-trading of bonds are ill-timed and "raise specific and general concerns". TBMA's letter to the secretary general of CESR comes seven months after the group attacked proposals in the initial consultative document, "Proposed standards for alternative trading systems", as "inappropriate and unduly burdensome". In response to these and other criticisms, CESR produced an updated document in January for a further period of consultation that closed on March 14. Speaking for CESR in January, Financial Services Authority chairman Howard Davies said that the committee had taken these comments into account and that significant changes had been made to the definition of alternative trading systems (ATS) and to the proposed standards.

As a further sign of increasing awareness of the need to have tight controls over the operation of banks and other financial institutions, in November 2001 the State Council promulgated the "Regulations on dissolution of financial institutions", which contained 38 articles in all.

Late last year Pernod and Diageo overcame competition, intellectual property and financing hurdles to close their $8 billion joint acquisition of Seagrams’ wines and spirits division. Edward Nalbantian of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Paris gives the inside story on an ingenious deal