“Asian Investment and Finance Law” – Special issue 34(1) Sydney Law Review (March 2012)

Professor Vivienne Bath and myself are guest editors and authors of two articles for this special issue, the first dedicated the Sydney Law Review to developments in or across Asian legal systems. The issue also includes an article on Indonesian law co-authored by Dr Simon Butt, presently serving as Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS).
The special issue contains the following nine contributions, with full-text PDF versions freely downloadable from the Sydney Law Review webpage:

Introduction: Asian Investment and Finance Law
Vivienne Bath and Luke Nottage
Articles:
Corporate Rescue in Asia – Trends and Challenges
Andrew Godwin
Lessons from Product Safety Regulation for Reforming Consumer Credit Markets in Japan and Beyond?
Luke Nottage and Souichirou Kozuka
Embracing Sharia-Compliant Products through Regulatory Amendment to Achieve Parity of Treatment
Kerrie Sadiq and Ann Black
Between Piety and Prudence: State Syariah and the Regulation of Islamic Banking in Indonesia
Tim Lindsey
Reining in Regional Governments? Local Taxes and Investment in Decentralised Indonesia
Simon Butt and Nicholas Parsons
Foreign Investment, the National Interest and National Security – Foreign Direct Investment in Australia and China
Vivienne Bath
Responding to Industrial Unrest in China: Prospects for Strengthening the Role of Collective Bargaining
Sarah Biddulph
The Influence of the WTO over China’s Intellectual Property Regime
Natalie P Stoianoff
Book Review: The Derivative Action in Asia: A Comparative and Functional Approach [edited by Harald Baum, Dan Puchniak and Michael Ewing-Chow, Cambridge University Press, 2012]
Luke Nottage and Fady Aoun

Vivienne Bath and I also reproduce below the text of our Introduction (omitting footnote references). It outlines and commemorates the long and strong tradition of engagement with Asian legal systems on the part of Sydney Law School, CAPLUS and the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL).

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Renegotiating Indonesian Investments in the Shadow of International Treaty Law

Written by: Simon Butt, Luke Nottage and Brett Williams
with special thanks (but no responsibility attributed) to Vivienne Bath and Chester Brown (University of Sydney Law School)
[Updated 18 April, with a shorter version at http://www.eastasiaforum.org/]
Indonesia’s new Mining Law regulation requiring divestment of majority foreign investments is unlikely to generate many formal investor-state arbitration (ISA) claims against Indonesia, based on existing bilateral or regional free trade agreements (FTAs) or investment treaties. But that assessment is based primarily on immediate pragmatic considerations. This situation leaves considerable scope for the international investment law framework to begin unraveling, risking complex adverse effects on cross-border investment particularly in the rapidly evolving Asia-Pacific region.

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Divestment of foreign mining interests in Indonesia meets the ‘Gillard Government Trade Policy Statement’

By: Simon Butt and Luke Nottage (University of Sydney Law School)
[with a shorter version at http://www.eastasiaforum.org/]
Professor Chris Findlay recently wrote on the East Asia Forum about ‘Australia’s FDI challenges in the Asian Century’, highlighting problems reported recently by ANZ Bank and Qantas in the region. His proposals including ‘innovation in negotiating modalities’, including a possible new plurilateral agreement in the WTO that would cover all investments (not just in some services sectors). That’s a nice idea, but it’s proving hard enough to complete the current round of Doha Round negotiations. In light also of recent problems in Indonesia, the Australian government should meanwhile reconsider its abrupt policy shift last April regarding an important protection found in most of its bilateral and regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment agreements (BITs): investor-state arbitration (ISA).

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