Subscription credit facilities are set to become more common in the private equity and investment funds space this year.

The recent flurry of European debt project funds has sparked debate over whether institutional investors will bypass intermediaries and follow the US model, by hiring in-house teams to manage their portfolios directly.

Paul Volcker, Sir John Vickers and Erkki Liikanen, the three economists tasked with devising the future shape of the banking industry, can all agree on at least one thing: universal banks should have no place in the risk-free utopia to which they all strive.

New regulations have hampered an old technique employed by primary debt capital market bankers to guage investor demand: so-called pre-sounding.

Speculation that the US delay of Basel III implementation gives its banks a competitive advantage over their European counterparts has been dismissed by lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic.

A Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) interpretive letter on cleared collateral segregation is likely to spur resistance within the financial industry without significantly reducing systemic risk, US lawyers have warned.

UK lawyers insist it is possible to effectively ringfence retail and investment activities without restructuring banks into essentially two separate entities.

Chinese banks’ Basel III fears are mounting as lawyers outline how regulatory implementation of the rules will limit the industry’s financing options.

The chair of the securities lending and repo workstream of the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB’s) shadow banking taskforce has laid out the policy options his team is reviewing, giving a real indication of what form the proposals will take.

With no legal framework for covered bonds in the US, institutions in Europe should be preparing to take advantage of the enthusiastic investor base that already exists there with dollar-denominated bonds.

European in-house must engage more with regulators to ensure their banks' business models and practices are fully understood, or risk supervision that is ineffective and restrictive.

Foreign banks with operations in the US will now have the same type of capital requirements as domestic bank holding companies.

Congress's decision not to include covered bonds in its financial reform has been met with disappointment. But many are confident of legislation later this year.

Greece's situation could already constitute a credit event. What are the consequences if it does?

Short sellers should privately disclose positions as low as 0.1%. And local regulators should aggregate the information and publicly disclose at slightly higher levels according to Eddy Wymeersch, chairman of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (Cesr).

The European Commission could seriously damage structured finance, say speakers.

Structured finance documentation has been revealed as inscrutable and ambiguous.

The UK parliament and media do not understand structured finance. In one lawyer's words, "securitisation is being subjected to tabloid journalism."

More regulation is needed in China to reverse the decline in stock market prices.

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The Swiss Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) estimates that about 150 foreign exchange (forex) traders are registered as financial intermediaries in Switzerland, who have not been subject to regulation under Swiss banking and finance legislation.

I'm consistently surprised by how little the mainstream press understands securitisation. Admittedly it's not the easiest concept to get one's head around, with its alien terms and acronyms. What an SPV is, and where it is, can be hard to explain.

There is public and political pressure to keep out or at least regulate sovereign wealth funds. It must be resisted

The brakes are on leveraged buyouts. Most deals in the US have stalled, and the few that will get done next year will be small, with very different financing.

Your shareholder agreement in Russia is probably unenforceable. Here's why

The credit crunch has one firm lesson for lawyers: investors need better advice on structured finance.

In a landmark decision, the Federal Court of Australia has held that the law will enable an investment bank to contract out of, or modify, any fiduciary obligations owed to a client.

Just when you thought you had read almost everything that could possibly be written on the subject of stock options, Stanford University professor Alan Jagolinzer published a study that suggests that Rule 10b5-1 trading plans could be abused in a number of ways to "facilitate trading based on inside information".

How companies can make sure they deal effectively with shareholder activists.

The real effects on the world's economy of an increasingly diverse CDO market.