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Lei Wun Kong Nuno Soares da Veiga Following the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) by the US Government, financial institutions in the Macau SAR are analysing the impact of complying with it. Under Fatca, foreign financial institutions (FFIs) are required to report information directly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regarding the accounts of customers who are treated as US persons for US tax purposes, and customers who have been identified as having links to the US. Moreover, Fatca provides that non-compliant FFIs will be subject to a 30% withholding tax on their US investments and US-source income. While the purpose of Fatca may be to combat the tax evasion of US taxpayers, compliance with Fatca poses a challenge to Macau financial institutions striving to comply with local laws, in particular the Financial System Act (FSA).

Islamic finance has experienced an impressive growth trajectory over recent years, with analysts tipping it be worth $2 trillion by the end of 2014.

Sidley Austin's Michael Sackheim, Ilya Beylin and Joseph Schwartz help international corporate groups navigate the maze of rules and exemptions under the CFTC swaps framework

In this latest installment, K&L Gates' David Bernstein explains why most stockholders of public companies are temporary investors, not owners

Investors in European high yield are once again unhappy at the erosion of safeguards in the region's booming debt markets.

The uptick in small business administration (SBA) licences suggests banks are increasingly taking advantage of the exception to the Volcker rule's ban on proprietary trading, which allows them to make investments through Small Business Investment Companies (SBIC).

The sponsor-led leveraged buyout (LBO) of Giant Interactive highlights banks' increasing comfort with Chinese borrowers' underlying credit.

ICMA explains how it is coordinating a wide industry effort to promote the emergence of a pan-European market

Soonghee Lee The D Group scandal that began in September 2013 spread the news in the market about the mis-selling practices by D Securities. An unprecedented situation unfolded, in which more than 20,000 investors filed complaints against D Securities with the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) within a short period of time. It was reported that, to resolve this scandal quickly, the FSS deployed more than 24,000 man-days to inspect the matter. As a result, on July 31 2014, the Financial Disputes Mediation Committee (FDMC) at the FSS rendered a decision that ordered D Securities to compensate some of the investors by paying them back at least 15% and at most 50% of their investment amount. This decision was based on the reasoning that D Securities committed mis-selling, such as advising some of the investors to invest in inappropriate investment products and not having provided adequate explanations at the time of selling corporate bonds and CPs (commercial papers) issued by other D Group affiliates. The FSS announced that 67% of the contracts subject to inspection were found to be cases of mis-selling, that the average portion of compensation for a given amount of investment is 22.9%, and that the investors who were found to be subjected to D Securities' mis-selling practices would be able to recoup a total of 64.3% of the investment amount (after taking into account the compensation that the affiliates of D Group that issued the corporate bonds and CPs would make based on their corporate restructuring plans). If both parties agree to the dispute mediation decision by the FDMC and the decision stands, then the decision would have the same effect as a final decision by the court, and D Securities would have to report the result of its performance to the FSS within 20 days after the decision became finalised. If a party does not accept the dispute mediation decision, then the decision would fail to become established and would not be binding on the parties; therefore, investors would have to resort to other remedial methods such as filing a lawsuit. On the other hand, the FSS limited the cases subject to this instance of dispute mediation to mis-selling cases. It further announced that investors would be able to enforce their rights by separately filing a lawsuit if it is later found that D Securities fraudulently made the sales.

Erik Lind Klaus Henrik Wiese-Hansen Since early 2000, the Norwegian corporate bond market has been transformed. From a small market dominated by domestic utility enterprises, it has changed into a global market characterised by large issue volumes of high-yield (HY) corporate bonds. This makes the Oslo Stock Exchange and Nordic Alternative Bond Market, combined, the third largest market place for HY corporate bonds in the world. In the same period, there has been an increasing number of international issuers and international investors on the Norwegian HY market. In 2009, only three percent of the listed corporate bonds came from foreign issuers. Now the latest figures show that in 2013, the number has increased from three percent to almost 50% and the total kroner figure related to foreign issuers is, as of 2013, approximately NOK 99 billion ($16 billion).