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Patrick McGurn Shareholder rights plans are often understood as anything but. By giving shareholders the opportunity to dilute a potential owner's stake in a company, they have effectively deterred any and all hostile acquisitions of companies that have adopted them.

Daniel Goelzer The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) sprang into existence with a clear mandate. The Enron debacle had so tarnished the profession's reputation that independent oversight was crucial to restoring a respected auditing profession. But the PCAOB did not just have a moral mandate. It had a strong legal one too, with a unanimous vote for Sarbanes-Oxley in the Senate and only a couple of dissenting voices in the House of Representatives.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the Indian capital markets regulator, has recently amended the Sebi (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009. The stated purpose of some of these amendments is to introduce so-called reformatory measures to revive the primary capital markets in India. These measures, according to the minutes of the Sebi's board meeting, are to encourage enhanced retail investors' participation, impose a higher standard of accountability on companies and intermediaries, and ensure greater transparency in the initial public offering (IPO) process.

The foreign owners of foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs, excluding wholly foreign-owned companies for the purpose of this article) are eager to reap the advantages of the increasingly prosperous capital markets in China to raise funds in renminbi and enhance their exposure to the Chinese market. Quite a number of these foreign investors struggle with the idea that the capital market in China dislikes so-called foreign gold miners, and thus FIEs are hindered from listing on the A-share market. This opinion may be quite wrong.

Foreign investors will soon be landing

More effective than it looks

Less foreign listings, a stricter SFC, and global regulations have all threatened Asia’s growth story. These are the market developments that will maintain its momentum

The IFLR1000’s 2013 law firm rankings reveal a cautious market that’s strategising for better days

Structured products, securitisations and commodity pools must navigate a patchwork of Dodd-Frank regulations. But recent interpretive guidance means all is not lost

Patrick Wieland Forests sequester and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide and play a fundamental role in global climate regulation. Yet deforestation and forest degradation of tropical areas is accelerating dramatically. Forest loss is responsible for between 3.6 and 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, representing 17-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007). The carbon sequestration and storage functions of the world's forests are a type of ecosystem service. Ecosystem services are generally taken for granted: we benefit from the clean air and carbon offsetting services that forests provide, but do not equally share the costs for their preservation. To correct this situation, mechanisms to value ecosystem services through economic incentives have arisen as an international strategy. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one such incentive scheme.