Lawyers from Tilleke & Gibbins’ Bangkok office have authored the Thailand chapter of the 2021 edition of Chambers & Partners Aviation Finance & Leasing Guide. John Frangos, partner and deputy director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution practice; Santhapat Periera, partner in the firm’s corporate and commercial department; and Nuanchun Somboonvinij, senior associate in the firm’s dispute resolution group, provided the Thailand update for the publication, which covers the most important legal developments affecting aircraft lessors, lessees, and financiers in 32 jurisdictions worldwide. The guide provides in-depth details on the legal regimes affecting all aspects of aircraft sale and purchase, aircraft and engine leasing, and aircraft debt finance, including sale and lease agreement terms; taxation; lease registration and enforcement; lease assignment/novation; insurance and reinsurance; debt structuring; securities; liens; and many others that affect the day-to-day operations of leading players in the aviation industry. Chambers and Partners’ Global Practice Guides provide in-house counsel with expert legal commentary focusing on practical legal issues affecting business, and enable readers to compare legislation and relevant procedures across a range of key jurisdictions. The full Chambers & Partners Aviation Finance & Leasing Guide—including the Thailand chapter—is available for free on the Chambers and Partners website, and the Thailand chapter be downloaded as a stand-alone PDF through the button below.

The new guidelines are intended to prevent the abuse of superior bargaining power, discrimination, and business obstruction when purchasers set credit terms with SMEs.

New regulations prohibit trade in meme tokens, fan tokens, non-fungible tokens, and native utility tokens in Thailand, and requires digital asset exchanges to revise their listing rules and conditions by July 10, 2021.

The Republic of the Philippines became the latest signatory to the ASEAN collective investment scheme (CIS) Framework on May 11, 2021, moving Southeast Asian capital markets one step closer to integration and potentially increasing the investment options that fund managers in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand and other signatory countries will be able to offer to retail investors in future. The signatory countries’ capital markets regulators—the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines, the Securities Commission Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the SEC of Thailand (leader of the framework’s working group)—announced the successful expansion of the CIS grouping simultaneously on May 11, 2021, after the four regulators signed a supplemental memorandum of understanding to formally admit the Philippines to the framework. The ASEAN CIS Framework was first implemented in 2014 to streamline the process for local regulators to approve foreign CIS units in the region that are authorized in their home countries. The original signatories of the framework were Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Now that the Philippines has joined the grouping, the four signatories’ capital markets regulators will continue to implement the framework’s harmonization of regulations and criteria for asset management firms, fund managers, and mutual funds that are permitted to offer units for sale across the member jurisdictions. This cooperation enabled by the framework eases the bureaucratic red tape associated with the domestic approval process and improve investment protection, thereby resulting in greater opportunities for cross-border fund distributions, product access, investment diversification, and alternatives for retail investors. The Thai SEC has already issued regulations that enable the offering of qualifying funds through the ASEAN CIS Framework, as well as through the Asia Region Funds Passport or foreign exchange-traded funds. Funds that fall under one of these schemes must file registration statements and draft prospectuses to