Novedades  News from the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade

Volume 4, Number 8 August 1997

 Center Staff to Analyze Securities Market in Mexico City

Securities Project team members will travel to Mexico City this fall to meet with Mexican officials and collect information on how the Mexican securities markets operate. The group, led by Richard Smith, chairman of the project, and James Rogers, associate dean of students at Boston College Law School, will meet with officials from the Mexican Securities and Banking Commission, namely Chief Legal Counsel Dr. Pedro Zamora. The team will also meet with representatives of the Instituto Nacional de Valores (the equivalent of the U.S. Depository Trust Company), lawyers specializing in securities, and representatives of entities working within the Mexican settlement system. The meetings are intended to allow project members to observe and analyze first hand how Mexico’s securities markets function.

Begun in early 1997, the Securities Project aims at harmonizing Mexico’s securities ownership, transfer and pledging laws with those of Revised Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). Harmonization would facilitate clearance and settlement of cross-border securities transactions within the NAFTA region. Moreover, revised Mexican laws could serve as a model for harmonization of securities laws throughout Latin America. The Center is working with the American Law Institute (ALI) and the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) on this project.

Following the trip to Mexico City, project staff will complete a comparative study of Mexican and U.S. commercial law and practice related to the subject. Upon completion of the study, the Center will host two conferences in Tucson to discuss the study and form a drafting committee to write proposed legislation for submission to the Mexican Congress.

In June, Tucson project coordinator John Hinderaker and LL.M. students José Antonio Gamez and Juan Carlos Bejarano traveled to New York City to learn more about Revised Article 8 of the UCC and various aspects of the U.S. securities settlement system. Representatives from the Depository Trust Company, National Securities Clearing Corporation and International Securities Clearing Corporation shared their knowledge of the Mexican market with the group.

For more information on this project, please contact John Hinderaker, Tucson project coordinator, at 520/ 622-1200. To support this project, please contact Kevin O’Shea, development director, at 520/622-1200; fax: 520/622-0957; e-mail kjoshea@natlaw.com.

 Bankers' Acceptances Project Initiated

Constantino ("Tino") Flores has joined the Center as the coordinator of the Bankers’ Acceptances Project. This project aims at creating a uniform bankers' acceptance arising from import/export transactions in Latin America and capable of being discounted in major international financial markets. Bankers’ acceptances are drafts usually generated pursuant to letters of credit; they are marked "accepted" by a bank and may then be bought and sold in financial markets. If harmonized throughout Latin America, bankers’acceptances would provide much-needed capital from outside the region to finance trade transactions.

Flores will also help organize the International Banking Summit of the Americas to be held in New York in 1998. In addition, he will be working on a U.S.-Mexico import/export manual. This practical guide will include portions of the Center’s work on transportation, customs, environment, tax and investment law.

Flores is a graduate of the LL.M. Program in International Trade Law at the University of Arizona. To meet the requirements of the master’s program, he co-authored with Dra. Matilde Carrau and Lic. Renato Martinez "Principles and Conditions Precedent for the Creation of a Latin American Bankers’ Acceptances Market," a disparaties study of the relevant laws in Latin American countries and in the United States.

For more information, please contact Tino Flores at 520/622-1200; fax: 520/622-0957; e-mail: cflores@natlaw.com.

Calendar of events

Sept. 19, Ottawa, Can.

Evolution of Free Trade in the Americas
NAFTA, the bilateral Canada/Chile agreement, MERCOSUR, and the upcoming Summit of the Americas will be discussed. Contact: Francine Dore, University of Ottawa, 613/562-5297; fax: 613/562-5121; fdore@uottawa.ca.Website: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/droitcivil/conference/free_frade.html.

Sept. 23, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mex.

Course on IP/Biotechnology
Organized jointly by the Universidad Autónoma Agraria Antonio Narro (UAAAN) in Saltillo, Coah., and the Academia de la Propriedad Intelectual A.C., the 9-hour class will address intellectual property rights in the area of biotechnology, focusing on the new Mexican federal law on plant varieties. Contact: Francisco Martínez G. or Gilberto Aboites M., UAAAN, Tel/Fax: (84) 17-14-19 or 17-29-02; agriplan@uaaan.mx.

Agenda

During the week of July 7, Jay Kittle, the Center’s deputy director, visited Washington, D.C., where he met with the following government and business representatives regarding matters of concern to the Center:
• congressional staff members involved with international trade issues concerning Latin America to update them on the Center’s activities;
• personnel from the U.S. Treasury Department to discuss the need for new Latin American laws that would permit asset-based lending;
• personnel at the Inter-American Development Bank to look at closer cooperation in future joint efforts;
• representatives of the U.S. State Department involved with several of the Center’s current projects; and
• the acting director of the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA) to talk about possible areas of collaboration.

Center Welcomes LL.M. Class of '98

This fall semester, fourteen students are slated to begin the LL.M. program in International Trade Law offered by the College of Law at the University of Arizona. The candidates for 1997-98 include Lillian Arauz (Panama), Tina Barajas (U.S./Mexico), Maria Gabriela Carrillo (Baja California, Mexico), Sergey Dyachenko (Russia), Wilfred Golman (Papua, New Guinea), Jorge Alberto Huerta Goldman (Mexico), Kristina Jonek (Germany), Luis Ricardo Rodriguez (San Luis, Sonora, Mexico), Claudia Tellez Flores (Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico), Fabrice Marcel Turbeaux (Paraguay), Karla Maria Venzor (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico), Lingling Yan (China), Min Hui Ye (China/Colorado), and Eran Zur (Israel).

On July 16, most of the new students, plus several summer visitors, began a special three-week introduction to the American legal system. The fall semester starts August 18.

For more information about the LL.M. program, please contact David Gantz, director, at 520/621-1801; fax: 520/621-9836; gantz@law.arizona.edu.
 

InterAm_SM database

Brazil
English translation of the new Industrial Property Law

Colombia
Ley 37, Por la cual se regula la prestación del servicio de telefonía móvil celular, la celebración de contratos de sociedad y de asociación en el ámbito de las telecomunicaciones y se dictan otras disposiciones (Law 37, which regulates the offering of mobile cellular telephone service, the performance of partnership and incorporation contracts in the telecommunications field, and dictates other provisions)

Mexico
The following English translations (current as of June 30, 1997) are being revised, and will be available at http://www.natlaw.com:
•The Fiscal Code of the Federation
•The Regulations of the Fiscal Code of the Federation
•The Income Tax Law
•The Regulations of the Income Tax Law
•The Tax on Assets
•The Regulations of the Tax on Assets
•The Value Added Tax
•The Regulations of the Value Added Tax

Recent headlines from the Inter-American Trade Report

Brazil
"The Freezing of Assets," by Levy & Salomao Advogados.

Regional
"Secured Financing and Electronic Registries — The Significance of Secured Financing from a Commercial Standpoint," by Mariana Silveira.

In the Summaries

Mexico
Central Bank's bylaws amended
Radioelectronic frequencies for sale

Argentina
Telecommunications giants AT&T and STET-Telecom join forces
The InterAm_SM Database is a unique online service providing Mexican and Latin American legal and regulatory information. Subscribers to the database receive same-day electronic access to Mexico's Diario Oficial de la Federación, the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Register.

Subscribers also receive the biweekly newsletter, Inter-American Trade Report, which features news summaries, analysis and commentary regarding issues and laws relating to commerce throughout Latin America. For subscription information, please call George Arden at 1-800-LAW-FIND.
 

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Media Coverage

•"Study Finds Flaws in Lending Laws," by David Eaton, Maquila Project Coordinator, Business Mexico, March 1997, pp. 27-29. Eaton demonstrates in this article how current lending practices in Mexico will not permit Mexican companies to participate in the growing maquila industry unless Mexico substantially reforms its lending laws.

•"A NAFTA Economy: Maquilas Main Force," by David Eaton, Twin Plant News, June 1997, pp. 32-35. The article summarizes Eaton’s maquiladora industry study, "Transformation of the Maquiladora Industry: The Driving Force Behind the Creation of a NAFTA Regional Economy." The study is available from the Center (1-800-LAW-FIND).

•"Cleanup at US-Mexico Border," by Amy Mignella, Environmental Project coordinator, The Journal of Commerce, July 7, 1997, p. 8A. Mignella analyzes how NAFTA benefited environmental conditions along the U.S./Mexico border. The article appeared the same week that President Clinton presented his evaluation of the NAFTA treaty before Congress. The same article also appeared in El Financiero International Edition, June 30-July 6, 1997, p. 17, and in Arizona Business, July 9, 1997, p.3.

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 Available from the Center

The Center recently released two studies, one pertaining to the maquiladora industry and the other to hazardous waste site regulations.

•"U.S. & Mexican Hazardous Waste Site Regulations: A Comparison," is co-authored by Amy Mignella and Dra. Mariana Silveira. In this study, the authors identify and analyze issues relating to differences in U.S. and Mexico laws regulating hazardous waste site management ($40).

•"Transformation of the Maquiladora Industry: The Driving Force Behind the Creation of a NAFTA Regional Economy," examines the effect that the maquiladora industry has had on the Mexican economy and how this industry will evolve under NAFTA. David Eaton, a Center research coordinator in Monterrey, N.L., is the author of this study. ($75)

Please direct your inquiry to George Arden, 1-800-LAW-FIND.
 

Center's Key Contacts

NOVEDADES 
Vol. 4, No.8

Contributing editor
Lisa Button

Novedades is published monthly by the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade, a non-profit research and educational corporation whose purpose is to facilitate trade and investment in the Western Hemisphere.

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