Report from Cyprus: An Overview of Cyprus MoU – The Essential Business Law Reforms

Abstract

This country report aims at providing an overview of the business law reforms required by the Cyprus Memorandum of Understanding (hereinafter ‘MoU’). It will focus on the most important provisions of the Cyprus MoU, which demand various business law reforms. Thus, readers will acquaint themselves with the most important reforms that are currently taking place in Cyprus business law. This paper will cite the relevant parts of the Cyprus MoU and of other important documents, in order to provide a clear and succinct overview of these developments. This brief country report does not aspire to provide a detailed analysis of all business law reforms brought by the Cyprus MoU and will not comment or analyse comprehensively the wide range of legal issues arising from the Cyprus financial crisis. It is necessarily a high-level summary.

In 2013, the European Debt Crisis also took place in the Republic of Cyprus. The sources of the Cyprus sovereign debt crisis were the overexpansion of the Cyprus banking sector, ineffective supervision, regulatory problems, excessive public deficits and the ‘haircut’ of the Greek State bonds in a previous bailout agreement. The Cyprus government concluded a bailout agreement with the Eurogroup, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (MoU) was signed subsequently.

Keywords: Cyprus financial crisis, Cyprus MoU, Business Law Reforms, Cypriot banking sector, banks and cooperative credit institutions, banking and financial reforms, insolvency framework, anti-money laundering framework, privatizations

JEL Classification: K22, K23, K20, K29, K10, K19, K39