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Corporates looking to set up headquarters in the continent need a jurisdiction of substance. Here are their best options

Oene Marseille Emir Nurmansyah As of March 1 2015, anyone flying out of Indonesian airports will no longer need to shell out for the passenger service charge (more popularly known as airport tax). The charge will have already been included in the price of the airfare. The Indonesian director general of air transportation issued Regulation 12 of January 23 2015 addressing this matter. Regulation 12 was amended a month later by Regulation 59 (February 24 2015), but the core change was retained. Article 3, which states that passenger service charge will be assessed and added to the price of the airline tickets sold by the airline, was kept unchanged.

Mall of Mont Choisy Limited (MML) was party to an agreement to develop and lease a supermarket (ADL) with Pick 'N' Pay Retailers (proprietary) Limited. ADL envisaged that the parties would enter into a formal lease agreement on a subsequent date, which would be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Mauritian courts and which would not contain any arbitration clause.

Dina Al Wahabi There are two types of securities that are listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange (QE), namely, shares and bonds. Only governmental bonds issued by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) on behalf of the Government of Qatar are listed on the QE. Although the procedures relating to pledging of securities prescribed by the Qatar Central Securities Depository (QCSD) Rules of Dealing do not differentiate between shares and bonds, there are legal and practical differences in pledging bonds under the Qatari Civil Code 22 of 2004. This article will set out a summary of the issues relating to the creation of a pledge over securities and discusses enforcement issues in Qatar. The QE is the securities market in the State of Qatar and is regulated by the Qatar Financial Markets Authority. Last year, the QE was upgraded from frontier to emerging market status by index provider MSCI, signaling investor confidence and improved governance. The QE has 43 listed companies and trades on securities, Government Bonds, Sukuks and Treasury Bills issued by the QCB.

Daniel Futej Cyril Hric The Slovak banking sector has faced new challenges in recent months resulting from international and European measures against tax fraud and tax evasion. As complexity increases, the need for more intensive cooperation in tax matters among jurisdictions becomes necessary. Slovak tax authorities need to have control over the proper fulfilment of tax obligations, with effective exchange of information on a European and international level. This topic has been discussed extensively over the past years on an EU and OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) level. The reason for such discussions is mainly down to increasing: (i) mobility of taxpayers; (ii) cross-border transactions; and of (iii) internationalisation of financial instruments. Such development requires effective measures beyond the powers of control at a national level, as respective states cannot manage their internal taxation systems (especially for direct taxation) without receiving information from other states. The efforts of recent months has resulted in the adoption of: (i) the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the implementation of the global standard for the automatic exchange of financial account information at the OECD's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (MCA Agreement); and (ii) a political agreement on a revised version Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation (DAC).

Anthony Dee Patricia Paz Republic Act No 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA), took effect on January 26 2003. The GPRA covers all stages of procurement of infrastructure projects, goods, and consulting services by all branches and instrumentalities of government. The GPRA establishes a two-tier protest mechanism to challenge a public procurement tender before an award. In order to exhaust this internal protest procedure, a bidder must first file a request for reconsideration with the procuring entity's Bids and Awards Committee (BAC). The BAC's denial of the request may be protested in writing to the head of the procuring entity upon payment of a non-refundable fee. The decision of the head of the procuring entity is final, such that the bidder may only avail itself of judicial review upon completion of protests and only on the ground of grave abuse of discretion. Arguably, this legal framework does not provide an expedient system for independent complaints review. Meeting the timeframes provided under the law for protest resolution is a challenge for many procuring entities, and the absence of independent and expert review undermines, to a certain degree, the legitimacy and credibility of any protest resolution.

Hong Kong has proposed a regime to ensure creditors will be able to recover value if liquidation is a more favourable solution than resolution. But practical implementation will be challenging

The acting deputy director-general for mergers at the EC’s Directorate-General for Competition discusses key cases and its priorities for 2015

Nawir Messi, chairman of Indonesia’s Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition, spoke with IFLR about its growing role

The regulator's head of M&A, Willard Mwemba, discusses how the body’s merger review process has evolved since its launch in January 2013