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The UK government’s plans to prohibit the use of cancellation schemes on takeovers is expected to lead to an increase in transfer schemes in the country

Three partners at leading French law firms explain how the Euro PP templates will facilitate financing for mid-size companies

Simmons & Simmons partners Charlotte Stalin and Penny Miller explain the key regulatory themes for the year ahead

New rules that expand the Foreign Investment Review Board's approval of investments in agriculture follow growing concern that the sector needs more protection

Contributors including Korea Corporate Governance Service, NYSE and Gen2 Partners provide practical advice for managing transactions in the country

Brazil’s new law adapts the instrument to local financing needs, but reveals the challenges of making covered bonds work in emerging markets

Imminent reforms will reveal the identity of those behind companies registered in the UK. The new disclosure obligations promise to create among the highest levels of transparency in the world

Besnik Duraj For more than two decades, the Albanian electricity power sector has been facing critical financial and operational problems, as a result of a number of issues and ensuing chain reactions. The most characteristic example is end consumers who do not pay the power distributors, who in turn do not pay the transmission operators, and so forth up to the power producing companies. With the entire electricity power system in a debt downward spiral, a major objective of the Albanian Government for 2015 is the reformation of the power sector by drafting a new bill. The new draft bill was approved during the Council of Ministers meeting on January 14 2015 and sent to the Parliament for debate and approval. Apart from financial goals, the said bill aims at fulfilling Albania's obligations in the context of the Energy Community Treaty. It seeks to harmonise the local power sector legislation with EU directives and rules, with a particular focus on the Third Energy Package for gas and electricity markets.

Elias Neocleous Since the beginning of 2014, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has been developing a risk-based supervision framework. By focusing on the entities and activities that are of greatest importance in terms of their potential impact, it aims to increase the effectiveness of its regulatory activities. Consequently, CySEC's assessment of the risk that each individual entity it regulates poses will determine the intensity of supervision. A risk assessment will be performed for all entities at least every year and the outcome will be used to define each entity's monitoring programme for the forthcoming regulatory period. The assessment will be based on the impact, or potential harm that could be caused by a particular set of circumstances, weighted by the estimated probability of those circumstances actually occurring. Risk measures may be quantitative or qualitative. Impact is assessed on the basis of numerical and financial data extracted from the entity's regulatory returns. Probability is assessed on a range of criteria including the entity's governance arrangements and its susceptibility to being used for financial crime.

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.