“Today, what we are doing, is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws, and granting banks significant new authority.” President Clinton’s quote is quite relevant nowadays in Albania, where a major overhaul of the financial system’s legal architecture is being implemented. Indeed, in just three weeks, the Albanian Parliament enacted four very important pieces of legislation: the Law on Payment Services, the Law on Capital Markets, the Law on Collective Investment Undertakings, and the Law on Financial Markets Based on Distributed Ledgers Technology.

On January 1, 2021, Act No. 49/2020 Coll. – commonly known as the BankID Act – will enter into force. This new legislation has the potential to bring a significant change to the way Czechs operate on the Internet and to promote further digitalization in both the public and private sectors.

Looking at the volume of non-performing loans in the balance sheets of the Hungarian banks, it is possible to believe that the situation has never been better. In fact, however, this is primarily due to the general moratorium introduced by the Hungarian government in March 2020, which protected both companies and consumers against insolvency and non-payment. Now, eight months later, financial institutions are preparing for a potentially massive wave of bankruptcies, as they already reserved HUF 250 billion in the first half of this year.

The Covid-19 pandemic took the world by surprise, and the response of the Banking & Finance sector was essential in dealing with the economic consequences of the crisis.

The terms of a loan agreement dictate the circumstances in which a lender can enforce its loan, guarantee, or security interest. In North Macedonia, a lender can usually demand loan acceleration (repayment before a scheduled maturity date) if the borrower defaults under the loan agreement. Security documents state when the lender can enforce the security, usually following a default under the loan agreement or the lender’s demand for repayment when due. A lender can generally demand payment under a guarantee as soon as the borrower fails to pay any guaranteed obligation when due. However, the claim under a guarantee will be limited to the overdue amount. A lender will therefore often need to accelerate the loan before it can make a full claim against a guarantor. Typically, under the finance and the security documents, lenders have the right to accelerate and enforce loans when borrowers become insolvent.

Cash pooling is a convenient tool for optimizing cash management within a group of companies, but its popularity in Russia is limited. One of the reasons for this is the lack of unified legislation on cash pooling. In fact, it is subject to a complex regulatory landscape of civil, tax, banking, currency control, and insolvency law. One resulting difficulty is qualifying the very nature of the cash pooling arrangements. At first glance this may appear a purely academic problem, but in practice it has far-reaching practical implications.