Search results for

Winston Maxwell examines the European Commission's objections to France's new foreign investment decree

Paul Hastings announced a further expansion of its corporate finance practice, with three new hires. The firm lured leveraged finance specialists Brett King and Susan Thom from Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy to join as partner and senior associate respectively. King and Thom have worked on leveraged buyouts in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea. David Grimm, previously with Cravath Swain & Moore, was appointed of counsel. Grimm has 15 years of experience in cross-border capital markets, corporate finance and M&A transactions spanning London, New York and Hong Kong.

Linklaters added to its new Dubai office with the hire of Jordanian lawyer Luma Saqqaf, who will become the firm's head of Islamic finance in the Middle East, and Mark Craig, a senior projects lawyer. Saqqaf joined Linklaters from Allen & Overy in Dubai, where she focused on transactional banking with an emphasis on Islamic finance products such as sukuks (she advised on the Emirates International sukuk) and Sharia-compliant derivatives transactions. Craig was formerly a senior associate in Clifford Chance's projects team in Dubai. Linklaters' Dubai office will initially comprise three partners and over 10 other fee earners, advising on capital markets, project finance, banking, Islamic finance and M&A.

John White, SEC The SEC appointed Cravath Swaine & Moore partner John White as its new director of the corporation finance division. White takes over as director, one of the most important positions at the SEC, from Alan Beller, who over the last four years has helped lead the regulator through some of the most important reforms since its inception in the 1930s. According to the SEC, White will start by focusing on its proposals regarding the deregistration of foreign issuers, improving the online corporate proxy process and increasing disclosure of executive compensation. In private practice, White has advised on a range of corporate financings, including many IPOs, and has been sought after for his corporate governance advice. His appointment marks the latest in a series of senior posts to be filled at the SEC after a wave of high-profile departures in recent months. White starts work on March 20.

In December 2005, a consortium of five international private equity firms backed a €10 billion solicited public tender offer for all shares in the Danish telecom provider TDC A/S. TDC is listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange and also on NYSE.

Daniel Andrews asks whether growth this year in the European corporate hybrid market will be explosive or stuttering

The recently enacted Italian Law 262 of December 28 2005 has updated the legislation for protecting savings and regulating financial markets. It amends Legislative Decree 58 of February 24 1998 (the Financial Act). The changes have been made in two main areas.

China's newly amended Securities Law, which took effect in January 2006, has modified provisions that relate to disclosure liabilities. The new Securities Law introduces a sliding scale of liability for three separate classes of defendants when a required disclosure document contains untrue statements or omissions of material fact.

Plans for a formal sovereign bankruptcy regime have failed, but creative use of courts and bond contracts could achieve similar benefits, says David Skeel

The dispute over the intention of Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US that forms the subject of IFLR's cover story this month is a model of how difficult the task facing those drafting the law can be.