Search results for

Japan Recommended firms Tier 1 Anderson Mori & Tomotsune Linklaters Mori Hamada & Matsumoto Morrison & Foerster Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu Nishimura & Asahi Tier 2 Allen & Overy Clifford Chance Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer O'Melveny & Myers Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom Sullivan & Cromwell Tier 3 Baker & McKenzie GJBJ Tokyo Aoyama Aoki Law Office Jones Day Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker Shearman & Sterling White & Case The Japanese legal market has been in flux this year, following the merger of Nishimura & Partners and Asahi Koma Law Firm, leaving some firms to mourn the loss of key figures while allowing others to celebrate privileged additions. In particular, Baker & McKenzie's Tokyo practice welcomed partner Fumio Koma and his team. And the market heard opportunity knocking – Freshfields relocated partners James Wood and Edward Cole from its London office to its Tokyo branch.

Ukraine Recommended firms Tier 1 Baker & McKenzie Chadbourne & Parke Magister & Partners Sayenko Kharenko Tier 2 Grischenko & Partners Shevchenko Didkovskiy & Partners Tier 3 BC Toms & Co Beiten Burkhardt DLA Piper Frishberg & Partners Gide Loyrette Nouel Ilyashev & Partners Salans Sergiy Koziakov & Partners The Silecky Firm Vasil Kisil & Partners M&A has never been stronger in Ukraine, with both international and domestic companies showing more of a hunger, and the transactions are getting more complex and refined.

Romania Recommended firms Tier 1 Linklaters Miculiti Mihai & Asociatii Musat & Asociatii Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Peterson Tuca Zbârcea & Asociatii Tier 2 Badea Clifford Chance CMS Cameron McKenna Gide Loyrette Nouel Popovici Nitu & Asociatii Tier 3 BPV Grigorescu Bulboaca & Asociatii Salans Schönherr si Asociatii Stoica & Asociatii Voicu & Filipescu Zamfirescu Racoti Predoiu These are exciting times to be a lawyer in Romania. The market is at its most active ever, and it can only get busier. No wonder then that partners and senior associates are leaving their firms to form new ones to take advantage of the wider market. Adrian-Catalin Bulboaca left Linklaters Miculiti Mihai & Asociatii and formed Bulboaca & Asociatii in early 2007. Daniel Badea went on to set up a practice with Clifford Chance, bringing one more magic-circle firm into the Romanian market. And in 2005, eight lawyers left Musat & Asociatii to establish Tuca Zbârcea & Asociatii, which has emerged as one of the burgeoning outfits in the market.

Norway Recommended firms Tier 1 BA-HR Thommessen Wiersholm Tier 2 Schjødt Selmer Wikborg Rein Tier 3 Arntzen de Besche Steenstrup Stordrange The story of the year in Norwegian M&A was without a doubt Statoil's merger with Norsk Hydro. The plan was signed by the board of directors of Hydro and Statoil in March and was completed in October 2007. The NKr175 billion (€22 billion) merger created the world's largest offshore exploration company and was one of the biggest transactions in Europe this year.

Ireland Recommended firms Tier 1 A&L Goodbody Arthur Cox Matheson Ormsby Prentice McCann FitzGerald William Fry Tier 2 Mason Hayes + Curran O'Donnell Sweeney Eversheds Tier 3 Eugene F Collins LK Shields Ireland's swelling property market has meant that mergers and acquisitions transactions have had as much to do with land values as company value. For example the value of the land in the recent Jury's Inn £750 million sale was said to be just as important as the value of the business. With the commercial property market expected to rise in the coming years, corporate and property lawyers could be getting to know each other a lot more intimately in the near future.

Project finance is the financing of long-term infrastructure and industrial projects, based on a complex financial structure: project debt and equity finance the targeted project, and debt is refunded by means of the cash flow that the project generates. All of the project assets secure the financing. Project finance employs legal instruments, such as securities, loans, and bond issuance, and it optimises the potential of these instruments. It is carried out through a number of steps: specialised Tunisian institutions (banks, funds) contribute to the financing. In this respect, syndicated credit appears to be banks' favourite financing technique.

On October 17 2007, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) announced a partial revision of its listing rules and regulations corresponding to the items in the TSE's Comprehensive Improvement Program for the Listing System 2007, published on April 24 2007. The aim of the programme was to facilitate the operation of the secondary market, protect shareholders and investors, and help listed companies improve corporate value and international competitiveness.

I'm consistently surprised by how little the mainstream press understands securitisation. Admittedly it's not the easiest concept to get one's head around, with its alien terms and acronyms. What an SPV is, and where it is, can be hard to explain.

Akio Kawamura of Nishimura & Asahi provides an update on the financial regulatory framework in Japan under the FIEL

The Japanese carbon market is opening its arms to the financial sector. This will lead to increased innovation and opportunity, say Tsutomu Hiraishi and Gavin Raftery of Baker & McKenzie GJBJ Tokyo Aoyama Aoki Koma Law Office