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Deacons | October 2005

Offshore Investment of Foreign Currency Assets of Chinese Insurance Companies Following the Provisional Regulatory Measures on Offshore Investment of Foreign Currency Insurance Assets (“Provisional Measures”) issued by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (“CIRC”) in August 2004 which allow qualifying PRC insurance companies to invest their foreign currency assets (which include proceeds raised through overseas listing) offshore subject to certain limits (please refer to our Client Update

Deacons | October 2005

The Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission (“FSC”) on 2 August 2005 promulgated new rules governing the offering of overseas funds in Taiwan (the “New Rules”). Please refer to our Client Update by email which was issued in September 2005 and posted on our website: www.deacons.com.hk for our Executive Summary on the New Rules. Deacons has held a client seminar on the subject in September and we had the honour of Mr. Gordon Hsin, senior director of SITCA presiding ...

Deacons | October 2005

At the end of August 2005 the SFC issued a consultation paper which comprised the final phase of a three part review of the manner in which shares and debentures are offered to the public pursuant to the Companies Ordinance (“CO”) ...

Deacons | October 2005

The SFC and the Jersey Financial Services Commission have signed a letter of intent to enhance regulatory co-operation. The SFC has indicated that this is part of a programme being undertaken with a view to working towards mutual recognition of investment products to enable easier distribution of recognised products. The practical impact of this programme has yet to be seen ...

Lawson Lundell LLP | November 2005

GETTING PAID ON A COLLECTION FILE – FROM START TO FINISH I. INTRODUCTION This paper is intended to be an overview of various issues and potential pitfalls that inevitably will arise in the course of attempting to collect on a debt claim from the time the debt becomes due all the way through to the enforcement of a court judgment based on the debt claim ...

Lawson Lundell LLP | November 2005

The National Venture Capital Association (US) has prepared various model venture capital documents for use in the industry, including a term sheet (the “NVCA Term Sheet”). These model legal documents are available at www.nvca.org. The American Bar Association has further commented on the provisions in the NVCA Term Sheet, in particular adding commentary including outlining any differences between the California corporations law and Delaware law ...

In Nicaragua, we did not have a Tributary Code as a unique legal body, the attributions of the Tributary Administration and the regulation of the different tributary procedures, the rights and duties of the contributor, were dispersed in our legislation existing in several cases, inapplicable norms, conflicts of application of the same, lack of adaptation to the actual technological recourses, among others ...

Kocian Solc Balastik | November 2005

Judgement of the Court of First Instance in case T-28/03 – Holcim (Deutschland) AG v. European Commission. By Decision 94/815/EC of 30 November 1994 the Commission ordered Alsen Breitenburg Zement- und Kalkwerke GmbH and Nordcement AG (in 1997 these companies merged to become Alsen AG, now Holcim (Deutschland) AG) (hereinafter the "Applicant" or "Applicants") to pay total fines of EUR 3.841 million for infringement of Article 85 of the EC Treaty ...

Deacons | November 2005

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China which is governed by the Basic Law which forms a mini constitution for Hong Kong. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy except in relation to matters such as defence or foreign affairs. It has its own executive, legislative and independent judicial power including that of final adjudication ...

Haynes and Boone, LLP | December 2005

Germany. November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht. “The Night of Broken Glass.” Nazi secret police and the Hitler youth swarm over Jewish businesses and homes, terrorizing and victimizing helpless individuals all over the country.1 SS leadership orchestrates attacks on every vestige of Jewish culture as “punishment” for fictitious crimes that will never be recognized by the rest of the world ...

A&L Goodbody LLP | December 2005

Persons responsible for filing annual returns for the following types of companies should be aware of this commencement order: Most private unlimited companies; Private companies not trading for the acquisition of gain by the members; Companies not having a share capital which are formed for an object that is charitable and is under the control of a religion recognised under Article 44 of the Constitution; and Companies which are exempted from certain filing requirements by order of the Co

Lawson Lundell LLP | December 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Recent and Proposed Governance Changes III. Institutional Scrutiny and Accountability IV. Inherent Governance Tensions V. Governance Regulation I. Introduction Corporate governance continues to be a hot topic. In Canada, we are at the stage of implementing a number of initiatives that have been enacted to follow the US lead in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation ...

A&L Goodbody LLP | December 2005

The Government has recently announced changes to the proposed regime of confirmation by directors of compliance by a company with its obligations. This note explains the background to the announcement and comments on the new proposals. Background - 2003 Act From the time that the Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Act, 2003 was first published there was considerable and widespread concern voiced about the proposed regime for Directors’ Compliance Statements ...

A&L Goodbody LLP | December 2005

On Wednesday 21 December, Ms Justice Laffoy issued her long-awaited judgment in Fyffes’ multi-million euro insider dealing action against Jim Flavin and his company Development Capital Corporation plc (DCC) and two of its subsidiaries. The decision follows 87 days of evidence, which closed in July 2005. Ms Justice Laffoy ruled that the defendants were not in possession of price sensitive information at the time they sold their shares in Fyffes and as such, no civil liability to Fyffes arose ...

Haynes and Boone, LLP | December 2005

The European Union has recently launched a new ccTLD (country code top level domain). Instead of using the various national European ccTLD's, such as .fr for French companies, .de for German companies, and .co.uk for U.K. companies, the EU has made available the .eu suffix as a Community-wide ccTLD. The new domain extension has already proved widely popular, with more than 100,000 applications for domain names filed thus far ...

A&L Goodbody LLP | January 2006

On 1 May 2004 a new and revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (the TTBER) entered into force - Regulation No. 772/2004. The TTBER will provide block exemptions for IP licensing agreements, ensuring that certain technology transfer agreements are automatically exempt from the application of Article 81(1) of the EC Treaty, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements ...

Deacons | January 2006

At the 18th Session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People’s Congress held on 27 October 2005 amendments were adopted to the Individual Income Tax Law of the People's Republic of China. The amendments were promulgated by President Hu Jintao on 27 October 2005 and enter into effect on 1 January 2006. Tax free allowance A first amendment raises the tax free allowance applicable to wages and salaries from RMB 800 to RMB 1,600 ...

Deacons | January 2006

The State Administration for Taxation issued the Reply of the State Administration of Taxation on Issues relating to Tax Refund for Reinvestment by Foreign Investors on 20 October 2005. The Reply explains the conditions under which a foreign investment enterprise (“FIE”) can obtain a rebate on its enterprise income tax (“EIT”) for re-investment of its profits if such re-investment is made in instalments or in phases ...

Scottish Enterprise has a number of schemes to make it easier for small to medium-sized businesses to access growth funding, such as a loan, equity finance - where the investors take shares in your company - or a combination of the two ...

Internet telephones are set to take the global communications industry by storm. Big names like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay are piling into the market and former state-run telecoms providers like BT are also investing. The technology was first developed by the US Defense Department as part of a research project on interconnection in the 1970s. But until recently only techno-geeks have had the interest and ability to make any use of it. But times have changed ...

On December 1, 2005, the second paragraph of section III of Article 31 of the Income Tax Law became effective and requires taxpayers seeking to deduct the purchase of gasoline to pay with the taxpayer’s check payable to the seller, with a credit, debit or services card, or with a prepaid card, authorized by the Tax Administration Service. On January 25, 2006 a new amendment to Rule 3.4 ...

As it is considered as of general interest, we would like to mention that on December 30, 2005, the Federal Official Gazette published an executive order amending Article 117 and Article 118 of the Financial Institutions Law ...

Deacons | February 2006

Complaints by foreign businesses regarding protection of intellectual property rights in China have been a consistent feature in media reports since large scale foreign investment commenced some 20 years ago. However, China's economic revolution over the same period means that opinions based on negative experiences in the past must be constantly reassessed ...

Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP | February 2006

On 13 December 2005, the European Court of Justice ("ECJ") found Marks and Spencer plc ("M&S") could claim group tax relief from UK tax authorities in relation to the losses incurred by its former European subsidiaries that had ceased trading in Belgium, France and Germany in 2001. M&S argued that just as UK resident companies in a group may set off their profits and losses among themselves, so the same should be possible for the losses of foreign subsidiaries ...

Deacons | February 2006

China presents enormous opportunities for the wealth management industry. Since the opening up of China’s banking and other financial industries to foreign investments, foreign banks, securities companies, insurers and fund management companies have sought to establish presence in this market through the setting up of representative offices, branches, foreign direct investments and joint venture companies ...

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