February 2014

Authored by Michael Gu (michaelgu@anjielaw.com)

During the first week after the Chinese New Year Holiday, the Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) published long-awaited rules on merger control cases subject to summary procedure, i.e. Interim Provisions on Standards Applied for Simple Cases of Concentration of Undertakings (“Interim Provisions”). The Interim Provisions came into effect on 12 February 2014. It has taken more than 10 months for MOFCOM to finally promulgate the Interim Provisions since the consultation draft was published for seeking public comments on 3 April 2013. However, compared with last year’s consultation draft, which contained only 7 articles, the Interim Provisions is even simpler with 6 articles in total. Except where the Interim Provisions dropped one article and made a few clarifications, no significant improvement or changes have been made to the consultation draft. The Interim Provisions mainly set out the criteria for concentrations that are suitable for treatment under the simplified review procedure. Though the Interim Provisions do not address some key procedural issues in relation to simple cases, it is expected that MOFCOM will soon release relevant supporting procedural rules and further optimize the merger control review mechanism.Continue Reading MOFCOM Published Interim Provisions on Standards Applied for Simple Merger Cases

Authored by Ren Gulong (rengulong@anjielaw.com)

On 13 February 2014, State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) released a consultation paper on Foreign Exchange Rules On Administration Of Cross-border Security (the “Consultation Paper”).  It is proposed in the Consultation Paper that restrictions on Cross-border Security will be dramatically relaxed so that FX/RMB will be fully convertible in respect of Cross-border Security.  This is a significant reform in pace with Chinese Government’s streamlining administration and institute decentralization and opening up of capital account transactions.

Cross-border Security refers to (a) provision of security by a PRC entity in favor of an offshore entity in an offshore financing transaction (“Outbound Security”); or (b) provision of security by an offshore entity in favor of a PRC entity in PRC financing transactions (“Offshore Security”).  The Consultation Paper penciled the following reforms:Continue Reading Proposed SAFE Reform Will Substantially Eliminate Restrictions On Cross-border Security

Authored by Arthur Dong (dongxiao@anjielaw.com)

Beijing Arbitration Commission (‘BAC’) was founded in 1995 by Beijing Municipal government and later became a financially independent institution. Since its founding, BAC has received great reputation among the business and legal community and growing very fast in recently years. [1] Many foreign companies choose CIETAC and BAC as the top two choices for their arbitration forum in Mainland China.

The last amendment of the Beijing Arbitration Commission’s (‘BAC’) Arbitration Rules (‘Rules’) was made in 2007 and went into effect in 2008. On October 31, 2013, BAC announced its latest amended Rules seeking for public comments. BAC claims that the new revision of the Rules reflects the valuable experience BAC has gained in application and enforcement of its 2008 Rules in the last 5 years. The discussion below will address numerous amendments to the 2008 Rules and the reasoning behind those revisions. Continue Reading Significant Changes Proposed in Beijing Arbitration Commission’s (‘BAC’) New Rules