Search results for

Corporate governance practices in South African have worsened over the past 12 months, according to an annual survey released last week

The Houston-based company's decision to abandon the MLP structure that it pioneered has sparked debate about its future

Despite their popularity in Europe and the US, warranty and indemnity policies have failed to gain traction in Asia – even in riskier emerging jurisdictions

Corporate issuance has exploded this year. But can it become a mainstay of conventional finance?

Samuel Hong A number of recent privatisations in Malaysia have been proposed to be undertaken through selective capital reduction (SCR) exercises. The most recent example is the proposal by Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, to privatise Malaysian Airline System through an SCR. Under an SCR privatisation, an existing shareholder (acquirer) of a company (target) becomes the sole shareholder of the target under the selective cancellation of shares held by all shareholders other than the acquirer.

The lighter side of the past month in the world of financial law

Soonghee Lee The D Group scandal that began in September 2013 spread the news in the market about the mis-selling practices by D Securities. An unprecedented situation unfolded, in which more than 20,000 investors filed complaints against D Securities with the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) within a short period of time. It was reported that, to resolve this scandal quickly, the FSS deployed more than 24,000 man-days to inspect the matter. As a result, on July 31 2014, the Financial Disputes Mediation Committee (FDMC) at the FSS rendered a decision that ordered D Securities to compensate some of the investors by paying them back at least 15% and at most 50% of their investment amount. This decision was based on the reasoning that D Securities committed mis-selling, such as advising some of the investors to invest in inappropriate investment products and not having provided adequate explanations at the time of selling corporate bonds and CPs (commercial papers) issued by other D Group affiliates. The FSS announced that 67% of the contracts subject to inspection were found to be cases of mis-selling, that the average portion of compensation for a given amount of investment is 22.9%, and that the investors who were found to be subjected to D Securities' mis-selling practices would be able to recoup a total of 64.3% of the investment amount (after taking into account the compensation that the affiliates of D Group that issued the corporate bonds and CPs would make based on their corporate restructuring plans). If both parties agree to the dispute mediation decision by the FDMC and the decision stands, then the decision would have the same effect as a final decision by the court, and D Securities would have to report the result of its performance to the FSS within 20 days after the decision became finalised. If a party does not accept the dispute mediation decision, then the decision would fail to become established and would not be binding on the parties; therefore, investors would have to resort to other remedial methods such as filing a lawsuit. On the other hand, the FSS limited the cases subject to this instance of dispute mediation to mis-selling cases. It further announced that investors would be able to enforce their rights by separately filing a lawsuit if it is later found that D Securities fraudulently made the sales.

The country aims to pass a casino law to boost tourism opportunities ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Masayuki Fukuda of Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu explains how

Private equity has driven the continent's leveraged finance market. But as explained by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's Daniel French, US investors will be crucial to its further growth

Sidley Austin's Michael Sackheim, Ilya Beylin and Joseph Schwartz help international corporate groups navigate the maze of rules and exemptions under the CFTC swaps framework