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New rules increasing Canadian targets’ ability to use poison pills are up for comment

Recent rules are intended to pave the way for Mexico’s fast-moving Fibra sector. How will this new direction affect the market?

Randall Barquero On May 20 2014, Law 9246 – the Law on Guarantees on Movable Assets (Law)– was published in the official Costa Rican law gazette La Gaceta. In approving this type of law, Costa Rica joins various other countries in the region which seek to give better financing opportunities to businesses, particularly small and medium companies. The Law is based on the Inter-American Model Law on Guarantees on Movable Assets prepared by the Organization of American States. It will allow the constitution of guarantees over specific items of movable property, or a generic group of these, as well as on inventories, equipment, circulating assets, and account receivables. The Government of Costa Rica, as well as the country´s legal and business sectors, have high hopes that the law will stimulate and increase the access to credit for companies in the productive sector of the Costa Rican economy that otherwise could not provide suitable collateral for normal credit structures.

The US district court judge lost his battle against the SEC’s settlement policy, but he may have won the war. Here, a former SEC commissioner explains why

John Breslin Karole Cuddihy The Irish High Court decision in Ulster Bank Ireland Limited v Dermody (2014) has raised an evidential issue for financial institutions contemplating debt enforcement and possession proceedings. The issue is whether, in proceedings brought by a bank, evidence grounding the proceedings can be given by an officer or employee of a legal entity other than the bank. In a number of cases, the intended deponent will in fact be an employee of a related company (or in some cases an employee of an external service provider), even if they have carried out the day-to-day dealings with the customer. In Dermody, the person who swore the affidavits grounding the application for summary judgment was not an employee of Ulster Bank Ireland Limited (UBIL), but rather of Ulster Bank Limited (UBL), a related company which dealt with the debt collection process of UBIL on its behalf. UBIL was a wholly owned subsidiary of UBL.

Kamraj Nayagam Adam Lee Malaysia's Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA) came into force on April 15 2014. The CIPAA is described as 'an Act to facilitate regular and timely payment, to provide a mechanism for speedy dispute resolution through adjudication, to provide remedies for the recovery of payment in the construction industry and to provide for connected and incidental matters'. The CIPAA applies to construction works carried out wholly or partly within the territory of Malaysia; it relates to any payment disputes and is not limited to interim payments. Section 35 of the CIPAA provides that 'any conditional payment provision in a construction contract in relation to payment under the construction contract is void'. There is a possibility that these provisions will impact contracts in other countries connected to Malaysia.

Banji Adenusi In May 2014, the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission issued new rules to address the influx of offshore mutual funds and collective investment schemes (CISs) soliciting investment from investors in Nigeria. The Rules on Approval of Foreign Collective Investment Schemes 2014 aims to bring foreign CISs (registered and regulated under the relevant foreign jurisdiction) which are seeking investments from Nigeria under the jurisdiction of the SEC. As part of requirements for eligibility to solicit investments, foreign CISs that have no intention of listing on the Nigerian exchanges are required to invest no less than 20% of the fund's total assets in Nigeria (Rule 2g). Obviously, the key consideration is the retention of a minimum level of investment within the Nigerian market, and by extension the reduction of capital flight. Equally, the foreign operator is required to appoint a representative in Nigeria for the life of the fund approved in Nigeria. This appointed representative can either be a duly registered fund manager with whom the foreign operator may enter into a representative agreement, or a freshly incorporated representative entity registered with SEC (Rule 3b). Solicitation of investments in the fund is then carried on through the representative (Rule 4). Where the foreign operator elects to incorporate a vehicle for the purposes of registration with the SEC, such local incorporation throws up a host of regulatory compliance requirements, including licensing with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council and compliance with the various applicable tax regimes.

The first sukuk issued by a non-Muslim country bolsters London’s plan Islamic finance hub plans

Political concern and misunderstandings could threaten the budding US rental securitisation industry before it has a chance to take off.

Last month UK Chancellor George Osborne said he was confident Europe could achieve a framework for sorting out bank resolution within six months. But to meet this ambitious timetable, the region's policy-makers must resolve several key issues.