UK Justice Minister Bridget Prentice announced, on 7 January 2010, a Commencement Order to bring the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 2009 fully into force on 6 April 2010. The Act, which received Royal Assent on 12 December 2009, is designed to modernise and simplify trust law on leaving property in trust for future generations.

Under the Act, a standard perpetuity period of 125 years will apply to property put in trust, by will or otherwise. The perpetuity period limits the length of …

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The new German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble announced, on 7 January 2010, that he would not be seeking to impose new reporting requirements on taxpayers transferring money to jurisdictions that Germany had previously labeled as tax havens.

The position is a reversal from the previous administration, in which then-Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck pushed hard for legislation that empowered Berlin to take punitive steps against those jurisdictions. The resulting law, passed in September …

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A Swiss court ruled, on 8 January 2010, that Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) had violated Swiss laws by authorising the transfer of data of 300 clients of UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, to US tax authorities. Three US clients of UBS brought the case against FINMA.

Last February, in a bid to settle charges of tax fraud in the US, UBS agreed to pay US authorities US$780 million and hand over details of about 300 clients. Banks in Switzerland are not allowed to provide …

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