Search results for

Latest guidance seeks to reconcile differences in UK and US opinion letter practices in cross-border financial transactions

In this exclusive interview, the regulator's former acting head talks about his successor, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Volcker and his future

The race is on to crown the world's largest e-commerce company. This particular market may count an endless number of organisations, but the battle is really only between the US' Amazon and China-headquartered Alibaba. Both have multi-billion capitalisations, huge market shares and more spare cash to spend than the economy of a small country.

The European Commission plans to shift prospectus approval into the hands of Esma – to the dismay of national competent authorities. IFLR asks whether it’s the right decision

It hasn't been a great year for the Americas. It's a year that around 48% of voting US citizens would like to see stricken from the record, where corruption scandals continue to engulf Brazil and Venezuela has fallen further into despair. Mexico continues to wait tensely to see what will happen to Nafta and whether a somewhat controversial 3,200km wall will ever materialise along its northernmost border. But even with all the doom and gloom across the region, it is Puerto Rico that has arguably been hit the hardest, allegorically, physically and perhaps most damaging, financially.

As early as March 2014 the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) alerted potential investors to the risks associated with investment in virtual currencies or contracts for difference (CFD) linked to them. Its recently-issued circular C244 dated October 13 2017 sets out the conditions Cyprus investment firms must satisfy in the event they provide investment services in respect of such products to safeguard investors' interests.

Will 2018 bring yet more uncertainty, or will the global economy come back down to earth?

Advisory services for securities have been a topic of discussion and concern for local regulators and supervisors, as well as for local and foreign market participants, because of the breadth of the existing applicable law and the various legal restrictions involved. Nowadays, advisory services for securities fall under one of the following descriptions: (i) a securities' intermediation activity, (ii) a duty requested from local securities' intermediaries; or, (iii) an activity not regulated by local regulations (which only applies for some activities undertaken within M&A processes and similar investment banking transactions).

Brazilian closed-end funds offer an advantageous investment platform since their earnings are only taxable upon distribution to investors. Conversely, income earned by Brazilian open-end funds is taxed every six months, the so-called come-cotas.

On October 25 2017, the Law of Secured Transactions (Law 936) came into force with the purpose of stimulating access to credit for individual traders, small and medium enterprises, and other institutions that due to the nature of their assets were not subject to financing at competitive interest rates.