Search results for

On April 26 2018, the Brazilian Central Bank issued new regulations (i) allowing certain types of transactions by credit fintechs, exclusively through electronic lending platforms; and, (ii) covering the areas of cybersecurity, data storage and cloud computing applicable to financial and payment institutions.

Sfera Legal, based in Costa Rica, has continued its regional expansion with the launch of Sfera Legal El Salvador and Sfera Legal Nicaragua. The firm is now present in four central American countries.

The Latin American region and the infrastructure industry have been making the headlines after recent investigations and exemplary sanctions on corruption-related scandals that have even overthrown governments. Colombia has not been immune from this situation: this has encouraged regulators to acelerate efforts to criminalise behaviours related to compliance risks especially corruption, bribery, money laundering and financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), and antitrust.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has announced the detailed arrangements for regulated administrative service providers (ASPs) to submit information regarding the year 2017 for the purposes of risk-based supervision.

IFLR speaks with Morrison & Foerster partner Susan Gault-Brown and of counsel James Schwartz on the poll results and what to expect next for the Volcker Rule

As part of its continuing bureaucratic and economic reform programme, the Indonesian government has streamlined the country's expatriate employment requirements. The new rules, which are set out in Presidential Regulation No 20 of 2018, come into force at the end of June 2018, three months after the Regulation's promulgation.

The existing labour shortage is providing fertile ground for the establishment of new unions, or the strengthening of the position of existing ones, and many employers find themselves facing this prospect. The establishment of a trade union is a relatively simple process which, when combined with the prevailing situation in the job market, has contributed to the fact that trade unions are cropping up around Slovakia often only as a form of bullying employers. Increasingly we are encountering cases where the persons who establish these unions do not even actually work for the particular employer where the union is being formed. These people select companies based mainly on their economic performance and then send out mass mailings to employers informing them that a union has been established in their workplace, often stating unreasonable and even absurd demands. They have no knowledge of the conditions at play at any employer, and only afterwards do they try to recruit the workers as members of the union. There has not yet been established a cohesive and effective form of defence against these practices.

The National Assembly has enacted the Law on Public Debt Management 2017 (LPDM 2017) which will be effective on July 1 2018. In comparison with the previous law, the LPDM 2017 imposes more stringent conditions on the new issuance of government guarantees for foreign loans of enterprises implementing investment projects, thereby leading to more difficulty in obtaining government guarantees for financing of enterprises and their projects, particularly for those with foreign-sourced funding.

Two years have passed since the Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM) organised the Development of Financial Leasing Business in the Macau SAR forum in Beijing. The purpose of the forum was to promote the implementation of Macau SAR (MSAR) governing lines for the development of the MSAR financial leasing system and to leverage MSAR as a platform between China and Portuguese speaking countries, and between the Greater Bay Area and Europe, within the Greater Bay Area initiative and China's One Belt One Road initiative, a position reiterated in the 2018 governing lines. Since the forum, China and Hong Kong SAR's banking and financial institutions have shown increased interest in Macau's financial leasing business. These financial institutions have a certain degree of expectation on the amendments that will be introduced to the present legal systems and that additional benefits will be created in relation to financial leasing companies' operations from and to MSAR. So far, two financial leasing companies have been incorporated and their operations authorised in Macau, in addition to the general authorisations that have been issued for banks to operate in Macau.

On December 1 2017, partial amendments to the Act on Specified Joint Real Estate Ventures (Amended Act) came into force. The Amended Act is aimed at making the specified joint real estate ventures system more accessible. The following is a brief summary of the new business categories established by the Amended Act.