Uruguay Capital Market: Law-in-the-Books or Law-in-Action?*

Beginning of article

I. INTRODUCTION

From mid 1990s up to early this century Uruguay has passed important legislation to lay the foundations of capital market development as a part of a package of market-friendly reforms in a vein of others attempted in most Latin America.

The immediate goal was to make the country's business and corporate law more hospitable to domestic and foreign investment. Innovative areas were exchanges, investment and pension funds, securitization, factoring, and trusts. Furthermore, reforms were carried out in corporate bonds and investment regime. A primary allocation of regulatory powers left an ample room to market participant self-regulation with the last resort …