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Ben Maiden reports on the findings of this year’s IFLR international bond survey, where Allen & Overy has kept its nerve and its lead on stand alone bonds and Clifford Chance has leapt further ahead on securitization

Many Japanese laws have been amended or created over the past few years to allow the use of electromagnetic data. For instance, Japanese laws providing for the authentication of electromagnetic data as well as electromagnetic signatures are now in place. The Securities and Exchange Law of Japan allows disclosure of certain corporate information in electric form. The electromagnetic information amendments to the Commercial Code of Japan, which will take effect on and from April 1 2002, will allow most corporate documents that must be prepared under the Commercial Code to be made and stored in electromagnetic form. Correspondence that is to be sent between a company and its shareholders may also be sent in electromagnetic form.

Allen & Overy and Linklaters advise on bond with highest conversion premium

Lehman Brothers have invented a new structure that allows a German state-owned Landesbank to raise Tier 1 capital in the international capital markets for the first time. The euro 500 million ($439 million) Landesbank Kiel transaction, which closed in February, would not have been possible previously due to withholding tax issues in Germany. Allen & Overy advised Landesbank Kiel. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advised Lehman Brothers in Germany and Clifford Chance advised the bank in Luxembourg.

Allen & Overy is acting as international counsel on the first cross-border asset-backed deal to launch out of the Philippines for nearly five years.

The UK's equity market showed the first sign of returning health last month as the biggest initial public offering (IPO) launched in London since July 2001. Things are looking so good that a technology company is planning to list in June – the first technology IPO for over a year.

Shearman & Sterling is to launch a commercial arbitration practice from its Singapore office to focus on the Asian market. Paris-based arbitration partner John Savage, who will head-up the new team, arrived in Singapore last week month packing up his desk in Europe. Savage will work with two Singapore-qualified junior lawyers initially, but is already looking to boost his team by appointing two senior associates specialized in construction arbitration.

As a further sign of increasing awareness of the need to have tight controls over the operation of banks and other financial institutions, in November 2001 the State Council promulgated the "Regulations on dissolution of financial institutions", which contained 38 articles in all.

The UK has moved to safeguard London's future as a financial hub by protecting securitizations from revamped insolvency rules in the UK Enterprise Bill, published at the end of March. The government has listened to the concerns of banks, lawyers and accountants that the Bill could threaten the future of securitizations and other capital markets transactions in the UK by removing the right for secured creditors to appoint administrative receivers. Losing this right would make it hard for secured creditors to enforce security over the assets of a bankrupt company ahead of unsecured creditors.

Under the terms of its entry to the WTO, China is committed to allowing greater access to its banking sector. Despite the slow inroads being made by foreign institutions, however, rules remain in place that will slow their progress, as Lester Ross of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Beijing, explains