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Mariangela Pellerano and Caroline Bonó, Pellerano & Herrera

A pressing issue in Japan is the ageing population combined with the diminishing birth rate. The Japanese government has been in the dark on how to handle these two elements. At first glance, these two concerns appear to present conflicting demands, namely (i) expanding health and medical services for the elderly, while at the same time; and (ii) minimising the use of public funds for those health and medical services, as a means of tackling the issue. Therefore, in order to deal with this problem, the Japanese government has drawn attention to the use of private resources, such as private funds, including Japanese real estate investment trusts (J-Reits), to provide sufficient monetary resources to the health and medical care industries through the acquisition of their assets.

EU derivatives legislation may fall short of delivering a cohesive regime

On July 5 2017, the Swiss Federal Council (Bundesrat) amended the Swiss Federal Banking Ordinance to ease the Swiss regulatory framework for providers of innovative financial technologies (fintech).

Local financial institutions have started carrying out due diligence on customers’ tax residency as devised by the CRS. But some questions still remain

On January 1 2017, the Swiss domestic legislation on the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) entered into force and the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (SFTA) published guidelines specifying the crucial aspects of the legislation for practical use. Under the AEOI, Swiss financial institutions (FI) will collect and exchange relevant financial information on 'reported persons' with Switzerland's partner states. By the same token, Switzerland will receive data collected on Swiss resident reported persons from Switzerland's partner states. The exchanged information will be used for domestic taxation purposes in the state of residence of the reported persons.

Dieter Grünblatt, Stefan Kramer and Benedikt Maurenbrecher of Homburger explore structuring options for international and domestic covered bonds involving a Swiss issuer

The ambitious long-term infrastructure development plans of Middle Eastern governments and related funding requirements, together with sustained low oil prices and the resulting volatility in regional liquidity, may finally have produced the right climate for Islamic securitisation to grow