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The purpose of this paper is to explain the content, purpose, and likely effects of the European Commission's draft directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers published on April 30, 2009.

The paper explains which firms will be affected by the AIFM Directive; the proposed new regime for fund promotion; organizational and capital requirements, including required background information and conditions of ongoing authorization; leverage disclosure requirements; and controlling interest disclosure requirements.

The AIFM Directive, were it to be implemented in its current form, would reshape the European investment management landscape, subjecting all entities managing or promoting pooled funds to regulation, imposing capital and disclosure requirements, and permitting a fund incorporated outside the EU to be promoted within the EU only if its country of incorporation exchanges tax information with the member state authorizing the fund.

The AIFM Directive is at a very early stage, contains ambiguities and inconsistencies, and will be subject to revision and refinement.

The paper presents a practical explanation by experienced securities lawyers.

Decision system analysis is a conceptually simple technique that maps the process of group decisions over time. The data is gathered in a variety of ways, but most often some form of protocol analysis is the foremost tool. The data is then condensed and depicted as a flowchart for a specific decision. If several such flowcharts can be assembled within an industry, they can be melded together to form a generic guide that is very useful to practitioners and very interesting to theorists. Here, a brief history of the development of the technique leads to a description of the process. This is followed by a comparison to cognitive mapping (a similar technique applied to mapping thought processes rather than physical processes), and an illustrative longitudinal example of DSA.

Peter Thornhill steps up from Scottish and Northern sales manager to UK field sales manager in Hydril's new marketing framework. As has been announced, Hydril has appointed three new agents — Brookside Technical Services, Gordon Smith Associates and Heating and Engineering Supplies — as part of the Company's policy of more intensive representation of its AOT Flow Systems to its various UK user industries. Peter Thornhill's primary task will be to co‐ordinate the activities of this powerful agency trio, all of whom will be reporting directly to him.

A FEW MONTHS ago we were listening to a management consultant who had arrived here from the USA, though he was originally an Israeli. We did not agree with all the things he said. One of his audience, in fact, asked a question based on one of his statements that he seemed to have difficulty in answering. Certainly it did not seem to satisfy his questioner.

DURING some courses on production and management problems at the T.U.C. Training College job evaluation and merit rating were discussed. The notes used for that purpose form the basis of a booklet which the Trades Union Congress has published at 1s. 6d. Its purpose is to equip trade union representatives with an outline of the systems most widely used.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

What is Electronic Publishing? Electronic Publishing (EP) is the application of communications technology to distribute information. In the context of libraries, it typically means large, often textual databases, stored on powerful computers, from which information is selectively retrieved using terminals linked to the computers via the telephone system.

The UK government has elaborated the effect of late payment on the economy, with its impact on the construction sector being particularly pronounced. This paper aims to evaluate the late payment epidemic that persists within the construction industry, specifically analysing the effectiveness of government-led voluntary payment initiatives.

A mixed philosophical lens is adopted that incorporates both pragmatism and post-positivism to examine the late payment phenomena. Couched within deductive reasoning and a case study strategy, a questionnaire survey was conducted to elicit responses from one-hundred construction professionals. Elucidating upon respondents’ perceptions of the UK’s late payment epidemic, a comparative analysis was undertaken of upstream (main contractor) and downstream (subcontractors/suppliers) contractors through Cronbach’s alpha, descriptive statistics, independence chi-square test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Mann–Whitney U test.

Emergent findings reveal that in practice, the monitoring and enforcement of government-led voluntary payment initiatives has been unprosperous with numerous contractors being forced to adopt indefensibly poor and punitive payment practices. Survey responses and extant literature substantiate and underscore the industry’s need to strengthen voluntary government-led payment initiatives. To create a responsible payment culture, any future code created should be mandatory and enforceable as a self-regulating approach has failed dismally. The work concludes with practical additional measures that could be introduced to create a responsible payment culture and promote ethical trading within the UK construction industry.

This paper constitutes a novel vignette of, and reflection upon, contemporary practice in this area of construction finance and serves to emphasise that very little has changes in the sector despite numerous UK government led reports and interventions.