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The Commission has proposed a Directive to establish a clear regulatory framework for the distance-selling of financial services within the single market.

Goldman Sachs’ strategy for Shell — to obtain funding at the lowest cost through currency swaps — has failed so far before the Canadian courts. Ron Schlumpf of CIBC Wood Gundy, Toronto explains the regulatory risks of derivatives

Globalization has finally hit legal services with a series of cross-border mergers and alliances in 1998. Paul Lee analyzes this year’s gathering of statistics on the world’s 50 largest law firms – the IFLR 50 – and identifies the firms spearheading international growth

Under a government decree (finance ministry, April 13 1998) a commission has been created to prepare a report on the status of Portuguese international tax laws. The report will:

A government bill on amending the Finnish Act on the Book-Entry Securities System, prepared by the ministry of finance, was given to parliament in September. The bill pays particular attention to the international relations established between securities depositories and to the handling of foreign securities in the Finnish book-entry securities system. In addition, the provisions governing the entering of foreign securities into the Finnish book-entry securities system have been specified in the bill.

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.

The long-awaited promulgation of the new Chinese Contract Law approaches. On September 7 1998, the People's Daily published the draft of a Contract Law containing 441 articles, another step towards unification of domestic and foreign-related legislation in China. The draft contains general provisions on formation, validity, performance and termination of contracts, as well as special provisions on certain types of contracts (eg sales contracts, loan contracts, lease and financial lease contracts, construction contracts and transportation contracts).

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