On February 16th Mr Assad signed a new company law, updating legislation that had been passed as recently as 2008. The economy and foreign trade minister, Lamiya Assi, said that the law needed to be revamped in light of issues that had arisen since the revisions were made three years ago. The new law, passed by Legislative Decree 29, incorporates many of the features of the previous law, but adds a number of new elements. One of these, which was highlighted by Ms Assi in an interview with Al Watan, a privately owned daily newspaper, is to allow public-sector companies to change their status to joint-stock companies, subject to the approval of the prime minister and on condition that the company has been profitable in each of the three years preceding such a conversion. This could pave the way for privatisation through listing some of the stock of such companies on the Damascus Securities Exchange. However, the government still adheres to a stated policy of ruling out privatisation for the time being. Ms Assi also said that the new law made a distinction between various forms of closed joint-stock companies, allowing some to be defined as private (implying that shares are not traded) and others as public. She said that under the earlier law there were about 360 family-owned companies that were not properly defined.