Derivatives & Structured Finance

Recent Articles

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  14.03.2023

  China

  China has ac­ceded to the Hag­ue Con­ven­tion of 5 Oc­to­ber 1961 Ab­ol­ish­ing the Re­quire­ment of Leg­al­isa­tion for For­eign Pub­lic Doc­u­ments

  On 8 March 2023, the People's Republic of China (the "PRC") has (finally!) acceded to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (the "Convention").The Convention between the PRC, as the acceding state, and other member states (which will not have raised an objection; see below) will enter into force as of 7 November 2023.This constitutes a long-awaited and very positive development.Please click here to read the full article.

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  12.01.2023

  Germany

  Ger­man Min­istry of Fin­ance is­sues draft let­ter on the in­come tax treat­ment of profit par­ti­cip­a­tion rights

  In November 2022, the German Ministry of Finance (BMF) issued a letter on the income tax treatment of profit participation rights and their classification as equity or debt, which is intended to provide clarity and investment security after previous uncertainties regarding the tax treatment of profit participation rights. Practical relevance The use of profit participation rights is becoming increasingly popular, especially among banks, for investments in renewable energy, and with a strong recent trend toward blockchain-based or tokenised investments. Depending on the structure of the profit participation...

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  28.11.2022

  United Kingdom

  Syn­thet­ic LIBOR up­date: 3 month syn­thet­ic ster­ling LIBOR to cease end March 2024 and FCA con­sulta­tion on syn­thet­ic US dol­lar LIBOR set­tings

  On 23 November 2022 the Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) announced that the 3 month synthetic sterling LIBOR setting will cease permanently at the end of March 2024. The FCA also launched a further consultation on proposals regarding synthetic US dollar LIBOR – proposing to publish 1 month, 3 month and 6 month settings until the end of September 2024 (the “Consultation”). In this Law-Now we outline the timeline for cessation of the existing synthetic settings and consider the FCA’s proposals regarding synthetic US dollar LIBOR. Our previous Law-Nows...

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  10.10.2022

  United Kingdom

  1 and 6 month syn­thet­ic ster­ling LIBOR set­tings to cease after 31 March 2023

  In our Law-Now at the end of July we discussed the market consultation of the Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) on the cessation of synthetic sterling LIBOR settings and the potential publication of synthetic US Dollar settings (the “Consultation”). See - FCA consultation on synthetic LIBOR - cessation of sterling settings and potential publication of US dollar settings (cms-lawnow.com). The Consultation closed in August. In this Law-Now we discuss the FCA’s first announcement in response to the Consultation on 29th September 2022 which confirmed that publication...

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  01.08.2022

  England and Wales

  Rus­sia sanc­tions up­date: UK bans new in­vest­ment in­to Rus­sia

  New UK sanctions regulations have come into force imposing the most rigorous restriction on doing business with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The twelfth amendment to the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 aims to “close off revenue streams that the Russian government could leverage” in order to “deepen…sanctions measures” and encourage Russia to “respect international law and the territorial integrity of sovereign nations”. It is now a criminal offence, imprisonable by a maximum term of seven years, for a UK citizen...

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  22.07.2022

  United Kingdom

  Fin­an­cial Ser­vices & Mar­kets Bill: A new be­gin­ning? UK fin­an­cial ser­vices in a post-Brexit world

  On 20 July 2022, the Financial Services and Markets Bill (the Bill) was introduced into Parliament. The Bill is the largest piece of financial services legislation for over two decades and covers a wide range of topics. However, it contains very few surprises because all of its main proposals have been anticipated for some time. What are the ‘big ticket items’ in the Bill? (1) Future Regulatory Framework: The main driver for the Bill was to sort out the mess left on the statute book by the mass-onshoring of EU legislation in the lead up to Brexit. The Bill establishes HMT’s...

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