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David Ethridge, senior vice president and head of capital markets at the New York Stock Exchange, discusses opportunities for Korean companies in the US equity capital markets

Oene Marseille Emir Nurmansyah Indonesia's Ministry of Trade has issued a regulation requiring the use of a letter of credit (LC) for the export of certain commodities. Under the new regulation, payments for export of crude palm oil, coals, oil and gas, and certain minerals including steel, gold, and nickel are to be done by way of an LC. Payments from export of manufactured goods are exempted from the regulation. The regulation also mandates that the payment price stated in the LC should not be lower than the world market price of the exported goods. Further, the paying bank in this process is required to be a qualified domestic bank (Bank Devisa di dalam negeri). LC payment performed by a foreign branch of an Indonesian-headquartered bank is disallowed.

Sky Yang of Bae Kim & Lee outlines recent legislative changes as South Korea finally comes round to tightening its data protection regulations

Roberto MacLean Article 106 of the Peruvian Ley General de Sociedades (Law of Corporations) establishes that a corporation may not grant loans or provide guarantees to third parties, in support of the acquisition of shares issued by such corporation. Some argue that this constitutes an absolute prohibition, and that any agreement providing such financing is null and void. With this in mind, some practitioners have designed structures that they believe avoid the prohibition simply because they avoid the form of a direct financing prohibited by article 106, hoping form will prevail over substance if the case comes to court.

Oscar Samour Last year, the Salvadoran Congress passed the Investment Funds Law (IFL), which established the possibility of channelling and developing collective investment within the local financial system. As defined in the IFL, an investment fund is a special-purpose vehicle that gathers contributions – generally in cash – from multiple investors to be invested in different types of assets, such as securities, real estate, and financial instruments. Under the IFL, investment funds are administered by a special-purpose stock company (sociedad anónima) called a management company. The management company is created with the sole purpose of investing the contributions from its stockholders – investors – in accordance with its bylaws. The patrimony of the fund is independent from the patrimony of the management company by law, and the contributions from the investors are therefore protected in case of bankruptcy of the management company. Additionally, management companies must design and establish mechanisms for asset and share valuations, and have the proper accounting and operation records as well as a merchandising platform for promoting investment.

Alexei Bonamin The Brazilian mutual fund industry, the sixth largest in the world, has been primarily regulated by Instruction 409 from the Brazilian Securities Commission (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários – CVM) for the past 10 years. On July 1 2015, this will be revoked and replaced by Instruction 555, issued by the CVM on December 17 2014, which will then govern the incorporation, management, functioning and disclosure of information of mutual funds.

The region’s multilaterals are moving beyond debt financing. Here’s what co-investors must consider

Luis Gabriel Morcillo-Méndez Maria Camila Ordoñez The Colombian Ministry of Finance enacted Decree 1648 of 2014, by which it incorporated hybrid instruments into the Colombian regulation, particularly in connection with financial institutions. This comes as a result of recommendations made by the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision (BCBS) regarding hybrid instruments and their incorporation as mechanisms for issuers' absorption of losses. By means of such decree, the Ministry included hybrid instruments as part of the additional basic capital of the Colombian institutional entities and established the required criteria for losses absorption. This innovative action allows financial institutions, from now on, to issue hybrid instruments and use them not just as a temporary financing source, but as a future losses absorption mechanism, which will prevent them from an actual liquidation or facilitate their financial recovery.

Dong Chul Kim of Paul Hastings charts the rise of international offerings by Korean issuers

Christoph Enderstein Antti Ihamuotila Oliver Felsenstein Burc Hesse