The Italian Cabinet adopted today a Law Decree introducing important measures aimed at stimulating the Italian economy, including significant amendments to the Italian Bankruptcy Act.

18 & 19 March: INSOL Europe Academic Forum/Academy of European Law (ERA) Joint International Insolvency Conference, Trier, Germany 22 March: INSOL Europe/R3 Joint International Restructuring Conference, London, UK 5 April: INSOL Europe Eastern European Countries Committee Conference, Bratislava, Slovakia 25 & 26 September: INSOL Europe Academic Forum Conference, Paris, France 26 - 29 September: INSOL Europe Annual Congress, Paris, France

Russia’s central bank governor has lifted the lid on $49bn in illegal capital flight last year – more than half of which, he says, was controlled “by one well-organised group of individuals” that he declined to name, the Financial Times reported. Sergei Ignatiev, due to step down in June after 11 years in his post, is seldom outspoken about any issue other than interest rates.

In late November, members of the American Chamber of Commerce gathered at the Four Seasons hotel in Dublin for a Thanksgiving lunch of roast turkey and pumpkin pie and a declaration of hospitality from Ireland's finance minister, Reuters reported in an insight. "We're a friendly country for investors and one of the key elements of the friendliness of the package is the 12.5 percent tax rate," Michael Noonan said.

A relevant national law in the field of insolvency must be effective regarding reorganization in order to ensure the rescue of companies or the survival of debtors, despite the existence of debts that they are unable to overcome – at least immediately. In addition, a relevant national insolvency law must offer the insolvency practitioners appointed in insolvency proceedings the means (but no less effective means) to combat fraud which may be caused by directors to the detriment of creditors or to draw the consequences from their incompetence or management failure.

The “crown jewel” lock-up, a staple of high-stakes dealmaking technology in the 1980s M&A boom, has been showing some signs of life in the contemporary deal landscape, albeit often in creative new forms. As traditionally conceived, a crown jewel lock-up is an agreement entered into between the target and buyer that gives the buyer an option to acquire key assets of the target (its "crown jewels") separate and apart from the merger itself. In the event that the merger fails to close, including as a result of a topping bid, the original buyer retains the option to acquire those assets.

The High Court in London has held that clients of insolvent UK brokers are entitled to a claim based on the value of their open positions as at the date of entry into administration or liquidation, rather than based on the value actually realised when those positions are closed.

As a transition economy, Latvia has experience in applying four different insolvency laws since the restoration of its independence in 1991. The most rapid modernization of the Latvian insolvency legal framework took place during the last five years, promulgating one completely new Insolvency Law just to abandon it after less than three years and adopt an even more modern law instead.

Multi-National Restructurings: A Comparative View of Select Jurisdictions (VALCON Conference, 2013) - Cory Lipoff, Lisa J. Donahue, Paul C. du Vair, James M. Lukenda, Dominic McCahill

Deutsche Bank says the benchmark LIBOR rate was rigged by individual rogue traders. But co-CEO Anshu Jain carries some responsibility because he organized the investment banking operation in a way that caused conflicts of interest and allowed the fraud to flourish, Spiegel Online reported. When Anshu Jain had finished his first annual results press conference as co-CEO of Deutsche Bank last Thursday, he tried his hand at a bit of irony.