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The new ISDA standard confirmation for credit swaps should boost the credit derivatives market. By Daniel P Cunningham, R Brent Jones and Thomas J Werlen of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, New York

Foreign investment enterprises in the project finance field must now seek the same foreign exchange authorizations as domestic entities. By Edward Turner and Edward Lam of Shearman & Sterling, Hong Kong and London

Colombian companies are increasingly looking forward to expanding their capacity into new markets and increasing their local capacity. The merger of companies is a useful instrument to enhance this capacity.

Nearly 75% of the voting capital, corresponding to about 30% of the total capital of Eletropaulo Metropolina was sold at auction for about US$1.8 billion on April 15. Eletropaulo Metropolina was the largest of the two distribution networks of Eletropaulo which, in turn, was the largest distributor of electricity in Latin America. The participation was acquired by Light, already a distributor of electricity in Rio de Janeiro, controlled by a consortium formed by Companhia Siderúgica Nacional, the American companies Huston and AES and the French company EDF.

On October 3 1997 a new Public Trading in Securities Act was published, which took effect on January 4 1998. The Act replaces the Securities Trading Act of 1991. The new Act provides, among other things, for a more detailed regulation of the field of derivatives transactions.

An Insider Trading Bill is pending before the Cypriot parliament which, when enacted, will constitute a comprehensive legislative code dealing with all aspects of insider trading. The provisions of the Bill are based on the EU Directive on Insider Trading (Dir, 89/592, OJ 1989 No. L334/30) as well as insider trading legislation in the UK. Until the Bill becomes law, insider trading is controlled, albeit unsatisfactorily, by rules derived from general law. The protections against insider trading available under general law may be summarized as follows:

The Business Bankruptcy Reform Act, S.1914, was introduced into the US Senate on April 2 1998. S.1914 proposes to amend the Bankruptcy Code to make it clear that assets transferred in a securitization are not property of the estate in a bankruptcy filed by the transferor. If passed, this amendment may well remove the legal uncertainties as to whether the bankruptcy trustee may reach financial assets previously transferred to a special purpose entity that has issued debt or equity backed by those assets. Other sections of S.1914 would amend the Bankruptcy Code to broaden the category of transactions that qualify as swaps or repurchase agreements and for the first time permit cross-netting pursuant to master agreements of amounts due and owing under forwards, swaps, repurchase agreements, commodities and securities contracts.

Holders of a joint bank account in the UAE typically instruct the bank to allow 'either or survivor' to operate the account. The purpose of this mandate is to allow the surviving account-holders to continue to operate the account following the death of one of the other account-holders.

On March 11, South Africa further liberalized exchange controls. Most of the changes were effective on announcement.

The Electronic Commerce Policy Committee has made recommendations for a national electronic commerce framework, to attract foreign and local companies to base electronic commerce hub activities in Singapore. Among its recommendations is the enactment of a proposed Electronic Transactions Bill, to provide the legal framework to address issues posed by electronic transactions and electronic commerce, such as: