Search results for

The Australian attorney general is on a mission to force greater liberalization of Singapore's legal market. Singapore's reform efforts so far, says Daryl Williams, have favoured the UK and US firms far more than the Australians. In the context of a free trade deal between Australia and Singapore, this hardly seems fair. Williams took his case to the Singaporeans at the beginning of June with a legal services mission to the city state, comprising representatives of the International Legal Services Advisory Council, the Law Council of Australia, law firms, law schools and arbitration and mediation specialists.

"It's one thing to put a nice pretty code of standards together and put it on the shelf. I'm more interested in whether it's being applied in the market"

The Central Bank of Brazil established, in its Circular No. 3.039 of June 8 2001, the 2001 Census of Foreign Capital in Brazil. This was due to the increase of foreign capital which has been invested in the country over the last five years.

Some observers have claimed recently that the much-heralded boom in European commercial mortgage-backed securitization will come to nothing. However, as Liz Jones of Norton Rose, London, argues, large innovative deals such as May’s ProLogis and the enthusiasm of investors give grounds for optimism

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has republished proposed Rule 45-501 (the "proposed rule") on exempt distributions. The proposed rule has been revised as a result of comments received on the version of the proposed rule originally published for comment in September 2000 (the "original version").

The government is completing the preparation of a Finance Act, the pre-project for which envisages an in-depth reform of the legal regime governing the Spanish financial sector. One of the basic aims sought by the government with this Act, as deduced from sections of the pre-project, is to provide a solid base for the mechanisms that guarantee true protection to the investor. For this purpose, the pre-project attempts to promote the transparency of the markets and the control of insider information.

Linklaters Swedish merger in sight

A number of firms in the Asia-Pacific region were making important strategic appointments last month as lawyers seek to optimize their positioning to take advantage of the active capital markets in the region.

The Argentine government recently announced a $29.48 billion debt swap of short term bonds for securities with longer-term maturities, deferring debt service costs by approximately $17 billion through the end of 2005. The "mega" exchange reduces financial needs at a time when it is crucial to make room to restore growth and ease fears of a default. The transaction was approved by Decree No. 648 dated May 16 2001.

The Forum of European Securitization Commissions (FESCO) has called for common European standards for alternative trading systems (ATSs). At present alternative systems are treated as full exchanges in some member states but not in others, which can lead to an inadequate supply of information to investors, the regulators have said.