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Africa’s governments are pushing the indigenisation of major projects. For international sponsors and lenders, it introduces home and host country compliance concerns

The region’s multilaterals are moving beyond debt financing. Here’s what co-investors must consider

The path to new debt controls in Europe has been gradual and deliberate. Citi's Kepler Geertsema and Jackie Leggett analyse the trend in the context of the restriction on indebtedness covenant

Luis Gabriel Morcillo-Méndez Maria Camila Ordoñez The Colombian Ministry of Finance enacted Decree 1648 of 2014, by which it incorporated hybrid instruments into the Colombian regulation, particularly in connection with financial institutions. This comes as a result of recommendations made by the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision (BCBS) regarding hybrid instruments and their incorporation as mechanisms for issuers' absorption of losses. By means of such decree, the Ministry included hybrid instruments as part of the additional basic capital of the Colombian institutional entities and established the required criteria for losses absorption. This innovative action allows financial institutions, from now on, to issue hybrid instruments and use them not just as a temporary financing source, but as a future losses absorption mechanism, which will prevent them from an actual liquidation or facilitate their financial recovery.

Besnik Duraj For more than two decades, the Albanian electricity power sector has been facing critical financial and operational problems, as a result of a number of issues and ensuing chain reactions. The most characteristic example is end consumers who do not pay the power distributors, who in turn do not pay the transmission operators, and so forth up to the power producing companies. With the entire electricity power system in a debt downward spiral, a major objective of the Albanian Government for 2015 is the reformation of the power sector by drafting a new bill. The new draft bill was approved during the Council of Ministers meeting on January 14 2015 and sent to the Parliament for debate and approval. Apart from financial goals, the said bill aims at fulfilling Albania's obligations in the context of the Energy Community Treaty. It seeks to harmonise the local power sector legislation with EU directives and rules, with a particular focus on the Third Energy Package for gas and electricity markets.

Oscar Samour Last year, the Salvadoran Congress passed the Investment Funds Law (IFL), which established the possibility of channelling and developing collective investment within the local financial system. As defined in the IFL, an investment fund is a special-purpose vehicle that gathers contributions – generally in cash – from multiple investors to be invested in different types of assets, such as securities, real estate, and financial instruments. Under the IFL, investment funds are administered by a special-purpose stock company (sociedad anónima) called a management company. The management company is created with the sole purpose of investing the contributions from its stockholders – investors – in accordance with its bylaws. The patrimony of the fund is independent from the patrimony of the management company by law, and the contributions from the investors are therefore protected in case of bankruptcy of the management company. Additionally, management companies must design and establish mechanisms for asset and share valuations, and have the proper accounting and operation records as well as a merchandising platform for promoting investment.

Elias Neocleous Since the beginning of 2014, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has been developing a risk-based supervision framework. By focusing on the entities and activities that are of greatest importance in terms of their potential impact, it aims to increase the effectiveness of its regulatory activities. Consequently, CySEC's assessment of the risk that each individual entity it regulates poses will determine the intensity of supervision. A risk assessment will be performed for all entities at least every year and the outcome will be used to define each entity's monitoring programme for the forthcoming regulatory period. The assessment will be based on the impact, or potential harm that could be caused by a particular set of circumstances, weighted by the estimated probability of those circumstances actually occurring. Risk measures may be quantitative or qualitative. Impact is assessed on the basis of numerical and financial data extracted from the entity's regulatory returns. Probability is assessed on a range of criteria including the entity's governance arrangements and its susceptibility to being used for financial crime.

Daniel Futej Rudolf Sivák It has been more than a year since the amendment to the Act on Residence of Foreign Nationals took effect. In this article, we will look at the practical application of the new rules. Foreign nationals come to Slovakia for various reasons, one of the most popular being to conduct business. If a foreign national wishes to remain in the country for this reason, they must apply for temporary residence. Temporary residence permits are usually granted for one and half years for conducting business, and may be extended repeatedly.

Kyle Shin, CEO of Korean hedge fund Gen2 Partners, discusses the domestic regulatory regime and the future for hedge funds in the country

In light of recent chaebol activity, overseers at the Korea Corporate Governance Service explain how the market must improve