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UK firm Allen & Overy has provided advice to the project company and the sponsors of a US$373 million project finance deal in Vietnam. The Nghi Son Cement Company project is one of the largest project finance deals in Vietnam this year and one of the first deals to be financed with a multi-tranche limited recourse facility. It is also one of the first times that an offshore account has been used to channel finance directly to a project in Vietnam.

Formula One Holdings, which controls television rights for the motor racing world championship is planning a US$2 billion Eurobond issue within the next few weeks. The issue through Formula One Finance BV replaces plans for a flotation of Formula One Holdings. The flotation was abandoned last year following an inquiry by the European Commission into the relationship between motor racing's governing body, the FIA, the television broadcasters and the Formula One companies. The bond issue may be a preparatory move before another flotation attempt.

Although the system being used by the Hong Kong Law Society for approving foreign lawyers was not what was contemplated by the legislation, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal has accepted its validity. The Legal Practitioners Ordinance clearly contemplates that the Law Society should assess whether an applicant to be admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong has the necessary qualifications (largely practical experience) before issuing a certificate stating which further examinations the applicant must pass before being admitted. However, the Law Society had begun a system, which it deemed to be more flexible because the exams were only carried out once a year, whereby it issued a certificate relating to exams before assessing whether the applicant had the requisite practical experience. The Court held that though this was contrary to the intention of the Ordinance, the Law Society's "flexible" procedures were acceptable.

Peter Langley, CEO at IP consulting firm Origin and consultant to Sidley & Austin, argues that in the future the owners of patents to financial products will control financial services

The Stock Exchange of Singapore (SES) recently introduced its Best Practices Guide to provide guiding principles on corporate governance for listed issuers.

On August 21 1998, the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange circulated among the companies quoted on its market, the answer that the Comisión Nacional de Valores (the securities and exchange commission, CNV) gave to the question posed by the Mercado de Valores de Buenos Aires as to whether the fall in stock prices, caused by the global stock market crisis could be construed as constituting serious damage to the quoted corporations, thereby allowing them to buy back their own shares.

The Danish parliament has adopted an act harmonizing rules regarding investments made by certain financial institutions (Act No. 490/1998) such as life insurance companies, pension funds and LD pensions. Financial institutions will be subject to limitations with regard to the proportion of their investment assets placed in certain securities. Before the act, investments in shares were limited to 35-40% of the total assets of the institutions. The purpose of the act is to attract venture capital to Danish businesses and to increase the proportion of foreign shares held by the institutions.

In the wake of Asia’s downturn, Korea has liberalized foreign investment laws and a similar move threatens the legal profession. Stephen Mulrenan reports from Seoul on why lawyers are divided over the issue of foreign competition

Switzerland's telecoms company Swisscom has been privatized in Europe's largest initial public offering (IPO) of 1998. The issue had been valued to raise about Swfr7.5 billion (US$5.6 billion) for the government and Swisscom and to give the company a market capitalization of Swfr25 billion. The deal is the first privatization in Switzerland and the largest ever IPO in the country. It follows the rapid transformation of Swisscom from state-owned entity to private company, having been incorporated in January this year. The success of the Swisscom deal contrasts with the problems experienced by other telecoms offerings. The French government has delayed a secondary offering of shares in France Telecom and Goldman Sachs has withdrawn from the underwriting group for the Telekomunikacja Polska SA IPO due to take place in November.

Michael Alcamo of White & Case, New York explains how to draft prospectuses in plain English and asks the SEC what issuers can expect from the new rules