Search results for

Media group United News & Media, recently merged with MAI, has bought conference organizer Blenheim Group. The offer is worth about £590 million (US$970 million).

It has generally been the practice of the Inland Revenue of Hong Kong to disallow payments made on the closure of a business as being non-deductible expenses for the purpose of a profits tax computation. The Hong Kong Court of Appeal recently examined this practice in the context of severance (ie redundancy) payments in The Commissioner of Inland Revenue v Cosmotron Manufacturing (Civil Appeal No. 75 of 1996).

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.

The Law Reform Commission has announced a plan that will give financially distressed companies the chance of avoiding insolvency proceedings by providing the company with a court-sanctioned moratorium from creditors while a provisional supervisor takes control of the company to restructure its debt.

Public equity markets are beginning to play an important role in infrastructure finance. Roger Dyer and Ian Harvey-Samuel of Freshfields, Singapore, discuss the guidelines for listing infrastructure project companies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand

Jeremy Xiao, who in August became the first Chinese citizen to qualify as a Hong Kong solicitor, will become a partner in the Hong Kong office of UK firm Herbert Smith.

US hospital management company Tenet Healthcare has made a successful bid of US$1.8 billion in stock for rival OrNda Healthcorp. The merger creates a company with revenues of US$8.5 billion and 126 hospitals. Tenet also assumed US$1.3 billion of OrNda debt.

• Clifford Chance's London office has lost its head of corporate finance, Peter Brooks. Brooks has left to become general counsel for one of his clients, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. He has worked at Clifford Chance for 28 years.

The single market has promoted growth, employment and competition, but the EU still has some way to go towards meeting the target of creating a set of truly common rules. This is the theme of a major new report to be presented by the Commission at the next European Council meeting in December. The report took two years to complete and gives an overview of the impact and effectiveness of the single market since its inception nearly four years ago.

A statutory entity can only operate in accordance with its enabling statute. A considerable amount of activity in Ireland is carried on through statutory entities controlled by the state but operating in the commercial sector. From time to time legislative amendments are required to ensure that the borrowing powers and capital financing requirements of these entities keep pace with commercial developments. The latest piece of such legislation the Borrowing Powers of Certain Bodies Act, 1966 which came into force on August 1 1996. In particular it increased the borrowing limit of ACC Bank plc.