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Gilles Thieffry of Andersen Legal, London, looks at the controversial Lamfalussy Report and argues that more needs to be done to promote a pan-European securities regulator if the authorities are to keep up with market realities

The Finnish Financial Supervision (FFS), the authority supervising the Finnish securities market, issued on March 29 2001 an official statement regarding the offering of financial services over information networks. The use of the internet and other network systems as a means of offering financial services has grown rapidly in the recent years. The purpose of the statement is both to promote the generally accepted banking and marketing principles and to improve the safety of using financial network services.

Shearman & Sterling has advised global coordinators Merrill Lynch and Banco Santander Central Hispanico on the controversial listing of Iberia, Spain's flag carrier airline. The US firm's Paris-based corporate partner Manuel Orillac worked on the deal while Cuatrecasas capital markets specialist Fernando Torrente advised on Spanish law. UK firm Simmons & Simmons acted for the selling shareholder, Sociedad Estatal de Participiciones Industriales (SEPI), the government industrial holding company responsible for the country's privatization programme.

Angela Clist Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy are advising on a whole business-style securitization in the UK utility industry, involving a £2 billion ($2.86 billion) bond issue to finance the sale of Welsh Water to equity-less company Glas Cymru. The deal is the UK's first non-equity funded utility financing, with profits to be returned to customers through rebates on water bills. Stephen Curtis is leading the Clifford Chance team acting for RBS Financial Markets and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, which are marketing the issue for around a month, before an expected closing in mid-May.

Linklaters & Alliance member De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek is set to become the first Dutch firm to open in China. De Brauw, along with ten other firms, got its licence from the Chinese ministry of justice in Beijing in the latest round of licence distribution. The office will open in Shanghai in September, complementing Linklaters' exisiting office in Beijing. De Brauw's other offices are in Brussels, London, New York and Prague.

Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells has grabbed a fourth bankruptcy lawyer from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius' New York office. Scott Talmadge joined this April, reuniting with former colleagues Margot Schonholtz, Mark Liscio and Jill Kurtzman, who were recruited by Clifford Chance a year ago to develop the financial restructuring practice group.

David Webb has long been a crusader against Hong Kong’s crony capitalism, but now he has upped the ante and is challenging the government to debate the issue of corporate governance openly. Nick Ferguson reports

The Hong Kong and English courts of appeal have been trying to disentangle their respective company laws to identity classes of creditors for schemes of arrangement. Joe Bannister of Lovells, Hong Kong looks at two recent judgments and asks if progress has been made

Rafael Maradei of Barbosa, Müssnich & Aragão Advogados, São Paulo, reviews the Brazilian government’s new attempt to reform clearing and settlement systems

Despite heavy criticism from various commercial associations, the Swiss government intends to go ahead with a revision of the Act on Cartels of October 6 1995. As the Swiss Federal Council declared on April 4 2001, the government is determined to win parliamentary support at least for the core issue of the revision, which involves the tightening of sanctions.