Hello there. Welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast covering the top regulatory stories from around the globe.

I'm James Panicki from Emlex's Asia Pacific Bureau. It's great to have your company.

Now, like any good murder mystery, the demise of ABLV Bank of Latvia has left us with a chalk

silhouette on the sidewalk. The bank's demise is in fact one of the few things that we know for

sure. But who committed the crime? What's the identity of the institution that shoved the

lender over the cliff? There are plenty of suspects, but identifying the culprit is proving a

challenge. It has raised interesting questions about Europe's oversight of financial services as well.

Jack Shikler is standing by in Brussels. He'll walk us through that

banking whodunit in about 10 minutes time. First up, though, the EU's new plan to scrutinise

foreign subsidies will give the bloc's executive and regulator, the European Commission, broad

discretionary powers. The Commission will be able to veto acquisitions, block foreign companies

from winning public contracts, and even force asset sales. Now, China isn't mentioned by name

here, but it's no secret that much of the fear in Europe over what's seen as unfair competition

on the part of companies backed by the Chinese state lies at the heart of these new powers.

To complicate things further, there are also national security considerations bubbling away

in the background. Of course, there's an argument to be had as to whether this new push

is legitimate. There would be those who say that what the EU is bristling at is legitimate

competition coming from abroad. Nonetheless, this is the discussion that's unfolding in Europe at the

moment, and it's one that our senior M&A correspondent in Brussels, Natalie McNeillis, has been

grappling with, and she joins me now. Okay, Nat, just tell me something about this latest move against foreign subsidies.

What do we need to know here?

Well, it was back in June of 2020 that the EU put out its white paper on foreign subsidies.

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