Germany in Forefront of Chemical Leasing; Advocates Cite Economic, Green Benefits

As countries strive for cleaner industrial processes out of ecological concerns, German companies and the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, or UBA) are stepping up efforts to promote so-called chemical leasing, which advocates credit with economic and environmental benefits…

China Further Eases Curbs On Foreign Investors, Opens Interbank Bond Market

Chinese authorities have further loosened controls on the investment regime for foreign investors, lowering qualification thresholds and broadening the scope of permissible investments to include the nation’s largest debt market…

ANALYSIS: Margin Requirements For Non-Cleared OTC Derivatives: Too Much Collateral?

Much of the regulatory reform agenda for the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives industry to date has been focused on the clearing, trading, and reporting of standardised OTC derivative contracts. Getting more OTC derivative contracts to be cleared through central counterparties (CCPs) will go a long way towards preventing a repeat of the build-up of risk that led to the financial crisis…

ANALYSIS: Hong Kong’s Newly Amended Data Protection Law: What The Changes Mean In Practice

Since its enactment in 1996, Hong Kong’s data privacy legislation, the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (“PDPO”), has remained largely unchanged…

ANALYSIS: The EU Article 29 Working Party Opinion On Cloud Computing And Privacy: Ten Key Questions And Answers

On July 1, 2012, the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, an independent EU advisory body on data protection and privacy set up under Article 29 of the EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC), issued Working Paper 196 containing its “Opinion 05/2012 on Cloud Computing” (hereafter “WP 196”). The scope of WP 196 is to “analyze all relevant issues for cloud computing service providers operating in the European Economic Area (EEA) and their clients specifying all applicable principles from the EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) and the e-privacy Directive 2002/58/EC (as revised by 2009/136/EC) where relevant…”

U.S. Treasury Unveils New Model Agreement for FATCA Intergovernmental Data Sharing

The Treasury Department unveiled a long-awaited model agreement July 26 for government-to-government information sharing under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)…