Asian Legal Review

The European Commission has found that Santander’s proposed acquisition of Banco Popular will not raise competition concerns, allowing a resolution scheme proposed by the Single Resolution Board (SRB) to go ahead.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday announced “dead-or-alive” bounties worth US$40,000 each for policemen he accused of helping an accused narco-politician, and said he preferred they be killed.
The call for police officers to kill their colleagues is the latest inflammatory comment by Duterte in his controversial drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives, and comes shortly after a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Duterte made the offer during a…

The South African-based Vodacom Group has finalised its acquisition of a 35% stake in Kenya’s biggest telecoms firm, Safaricom.

Australia will hold a voluntary postal vote on whether to legalise gay marriage if parliament rejects plans for a plebiscite on the contentious issue, the prime minister said yesterday.
Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, last November rebuffed plans for a national plebiscite involving 15 million people, with the Labor opposition, Greens and cross-bench MPs arguing it would be expensive and create division.
Several gay senators made impassioned pleas against the plan at the time, saying…

The UK government has announced more details behind its upcoming Data Protection Bill, which will transpose into domestic law the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Asia-Pacific foreign ministers made plain to North Korea on Monday it is time that it stop taking actions posing threats to regional peace.
But North Korea’s foreign minister, who attended an annual security meeting in Manila with them, staunchly defended his country’s missile nuclear programme as legitimate and self-defensive in nature.
“We will, under no circumstances, put the nuclear and ballistic missiles on the negotiating table…unless the hostile policy and the nuclear…

The United States has been providing the Philippines with surveillance capabilities, training, information and aircraft to help it fight a months-long siege of a southern city by pro-Islamic State group militants, the top US diplomat said Monday as he prepared to meet the country’s polarising president.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Manila for a regional gathering, said the equipment includes a few Cessna aircraft and a few drones. He said they’ll help the Philippines…

Singapore’s Keppel Land, part of conglomerate Keppel Group Ltd, said its independent director has resigned after his permanent residency was cancelled when he was accused of being an agent of influence for a foreign country.
Chinese-American professor and his wife to be expelled from Singapore
The Ministry of Home Affairs said on Friday that Huang Jing, a professor of US-China relations at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, “knowingly interacted with intelligence…

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution to expand sanctions aimed at ­cutting North Korea’s ability to fund its nuclear ­programme, but analysts are sceptical on how ­effective it will be.
The new resolution prohibits UN member states from buying coal, iron ore and other key commodities from North Korea, a move meant to cut the country’s export revenue by one third, or US$1 billion, annually, according to the Security Council. But the…

When Cambodian actress Denny Kwan was banned from making films by the government, she faced an ultimatum: dress in a more traditional manner, or risk losing your career. In late April, the 24-year-old was barred from appearing in movies for a year after Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts deemed that her style of dress had violated a 2010 code of conduct relating to “virtue” and “ethics” in the Southeast Asian country. Kwan, who has appeared in many movies…