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Ignacio Buil Aldana José Luis Lucena During 2014, Spain's Insolvency Act suffered an accelerated shift. This was a response to the economy's need to adapt to unprecedented complex insolvency cases that the former wording of the law was unable to tackle. However, this sudden legal evolution has engendered a general feeling of uncertainty caused by the lack of case law and real life examples. In an attempt to remedy this situation, in late 2014 the commercial justices of Madrid drafted a unified document approving common criteria with which to approach the new Spanish Insolvency Act. In essence, light has been shed upon a number of issues that have been holding back investors from distressed investing opportunities in Spain.

Muharrem Küçük Tolga Çabakli The new regulation on Principles and Procedures Applicable to Factoring Transactions (Regulation) was published by the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency on February 4 2015 (Official Gazette 29257). The Regulation includes provisions related to: (i) invoicing; (ii) provision of negotiable instruments; (iii) assignment of future receivables; and (vii) retention of documents. The Regulation aims to prevent any fictive factoring transactions. It is prohibited to enter into any factoring transaction without a genuine invoice or a document which is also treated as the invoice. Banks and factoring companies incorporated in Turkey (Institutions) are required to inspect transactions to verify whether invoices are repeating or recurring, through the Central Invoice Record System. Additionally, if an invoice has been cancelled, clients must notify the Institutions and for the provision of new replacement invoices an undertaking must be provided by clients.

Daniel Futej Cyril Hric In November 2014, the Slovak Parliament passed Act 371/2014 on resolving crisis situations on the financial market and on amending certain acts (Act). The Act transposes Directive 2014/59/EU (which establishes a framework for the recovery and resolution of credit institutions and investment firms) of the European Parliament and of the Council (BRRD) into Slovak law. The objective of implementing the BRRD is to introduce the new framework of prevention and resolution of potential crisis situations on the financial market, which was created at the EU level in response to the financial crisis. The financial crisis demonstrated the extensive scope and range of risks on the financial market, where the complexity of interconnection means that the failure of one financial institution may cause a systemic crisis that has the potential to affect the entire financial system. The priority of the Act is to implement the effective crisis management system created by the BRRD. According to the Act, the Resolution Council (Rada pre riešenie krízových situácií – the Council) was established on January 1 2015 as the national resolution authority in the Slovak Republic. The institutions that fall within the competence of the Council are credit institutions and investment companies with share capital of at least €730,000. The Council is part of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM), which comprises: (i) the Single Resolution Board, based in Brussels; (ii) the national resolution authorities of the euro area countries; (iii) the national resolution authorities of those other EU member states that have opted to participate in the SRM.

Companies will be forced to be more innovative in their funding The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) recent proposal to further limit banks' exposure to a single corporate and connected parties could prompt companies to tap the local debt capital markets. In a March 27 discussion paper, the regulator proposed capping exposure to connected counterparties at 25% of a financial institution's eligible capital base.

Elias Neocleous At the end of January 2015 a number of detailed amendments were made to Cyprus laws regulating the financial and investment sector to align them with EU legislation. The principal changes were to the Takeover Bids Law of 2007, Alternative Investment Fund Managers Law of 2013, and the Business of Credit Institutions Law of 1997. Law 7(I) of 2015 amends the requirement contained in article 13(1) of the Takeover Bids Law for a mandatory bid to be made when a certain percentage shareholding is reached. Following the amendment, this requirement does not apply in the event that the acquisition (or possession) of titles arises due to the application of resolution tools, powers and mechanisms provided for in title IV of the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive. This is in line with article 119 of that directive.

On January 16 2015, the Federal Department of Finance (FDF) published the revised wording of the Expatriate Ordinance (ExpaV, SR 642.118.3) which will enter into force on January 1 2016. The new ExpaV confirms Switzerland as an attractive place for employees from abroad, due to the higher enforceability of the deductions provided for in the ExpaV. According to the revised ExpaV, the following amendments may be considered the main changes compared to the existing law.

The FSB’s consultation on total loss-absorbing capacity is the last significant piece of post-crisis reform. But there are concerns about how it will work in practice

Market players must tread carefully to capitalise on policymakers’ efforts to revive the regional economy

The government privatisation bucked the regional trend by using both Reg S and Rule 144A offerings

Here are the key discussion points from this week's IFLR Southeast Asia forum, held in Singapore's Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel