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Elizabeth Wall, group director of legal services at Cable & Wireless, London, talks to Diana Bentley

On November 11 1996, South Africa's new Labour Relations Act took effect. The Act, to a large extent, replaced the prior South African labour law framework. The primary focus of the Act is the regulation of relations between trade unions and employers. However, to a lesser extent, the Act also regulates important aspects of the relationship between employers and individual employees. The Act encompasses all sectors of the labour force, in contrast to the predecessor legislation which did not cover employees in the agricultural, domestic services or public sectors.

The Act on bonds which came into force on August 20 1995 deals with particular types of bonds such as convertibles. Since then, no convertible bonds have been publicly offered by Polish issuers and quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. However, a few convertible bond issues are now known to be in preparation. Convertible bonds need to be attractive securities to satisfy both corporate and financial needs (eg, they may serve as protection against an unexpected takeover; the public offer or private placement, as the case may be, of convertible bonds is often easier and more successful than that of standard bonds).

At present the Swiss criminal code (SCC) does not contain an express provision making the manipulation of stock prices a criminal offence. However, this will change with a new provision, Article 161bis SCC, scheduled to come into force in the course of 1997. This sets out the kinds of manipulation of stock prices punishable by law and reads as follows:

Under present Swedish legislation a company is prohibited from signing for, acquiring or taking as security shares issued by the company itself or by a parent company. This rule, originally justified by the need to protect the creditors of a company, was introduced in 1895 and has been restated in subsequent legislation for a variety of reasons.

New Zealand is about to undergo its most significant securities law reform in over a decade. Lloyd Kavanagh and Gregg Dell of Russell McVeagh McKenzie Bartleet & Co, Wellington, discuss the changes

Michael Olislaegers and Axel Haelterman of Loeff Claeys Verbeke, Antwerp and Brussels, provide a detailed overview of the structure and functioning of Europe’s new screen-based securities market for growth companies

US power producer CalEnergy has made a hostile bid of £659 million (US$990 million) for UK regional electricity company Northern Electric.

On July 25 1996 the Bank of Italy introduced a number of amendments to the Regulations enacted on May 20 1994 to implement Law No. 86/1994 on real estate closed investment funds.

A committee appointed by the Finnish Ministry of Finance has issued a proposal concerning amendments to the deposit guarantee scheme.