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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.

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.

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.

France Recommended firms Tier 1 Bredin Prat Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier Linklaters Tier 2 Gide Loyrette Nouel Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom Sullivan & Cromwell Tier 3 Ashurst Clifford Chance Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Orrick Rambaud Martel Shearman & Sterling Weil Gotshal & Manges Willkie Farr & Gallagher In recent years France has seen a steep rise in private equity. Hedge funds also now wield much more influence and funds are often demanding changes in the way companies are run. This phenomenon has been labelled as shareholder activism, and the expectations of these investors, which are often rooted in short-term gains, can be very different to those of classical public shareholders. And they frequently get their own way – the possession of large equity blocks, and the ability to band together, allows these funds to push through even the most drastic of changes.

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.

Australia Recommended firms Tier 1 Allens Arthur Robinson Blake Dawson Waldron Clayton Utz Freehills Mallesons Stephen Jaques Tier 2 Gilbert + Tobin Minter Ellison Tier 3 Atanaskovic Hartnell Baker & McKenzie Australia has seen some colossal deals this year with the surge of private entrepreneurs accessing public markets in an attempt to acquire strategic assets. Such investors are less interested in financial services, due to the heavily leveraged and highly regulated bank sector, and are instead looking towards businesses that can be re-engineered in a short span of time. While private-equity deals remain attractive for their sheer size, they have the potential to present equally huge obstacles for firms attempting to structure transactions under the tight time constraints imposed. As one lawyer pointed out: "Private-equity investors have been able to do these deals too easily. A$3 billion worth of private-equity deals have fallen in the last three months and now we're seeing a reappraisal."

The competitive working environment and the need to focus on core activities force today's financial institutions to outsource some services, critical to their business, for which they have limited expertise and/or limited funds. Outsourcing offers a cost-efficient business by preventing time loss. The Banking Law and the related legislation recently enacted comprise provisions with respect to outsourcing in light of global trends. The Banking Law provides the definition of outsourcing companies (supporting service providers) in Article 3; however it leaves the details of application to the secondary legislation. The rules regarding the procurement of outsourcing services by banks and authorisation of the service providers – the Outsourcing Regulation, enacted on November 1 2006 – regulates outsourcing companies and the specifications of outsourced services.

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.