In November 2008, the Treasury published 'A Report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer: by the Rights Issue Review Group' which proposed a series of far-reaching reforms to the rights issue process. Rights issues in the UK currently take at least 39 days, but if the proposals in the report are implemented this would fall almost immediately to 32 days, and for many issues to 16 days.

The Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform ("BERR") has recently published a consultation document setting out draft regulations (the "Regulations") to amend the Companies Act 2006 ("CA 2006") in order to implement the directive (adopted by the EU Commission on 11 July 2007) on the exercise of certain rights of shareholders in listed companies (the "Directive").