Search results for

Shearman & Sterling opened its first office in Italy on March 18 in Rome and plans to open another in Milan. Partners Michael Bosco and Robert Ellison, together with Italian lead associate Domenico Fanuele, will lead the Rome operation. The office initially comprises about 10 lawyers with room for 25. And the firm is hunting for more. "We are actively looking for an Italian partner [from another firm]," said Ellison last month.

In a recent decision regarding the battle for Australia’s Normandy Mining, the Takeovers Panel made its first decision on break fees and has released its reasoning. Baden Furphy and Tony Damian of Freehills’ Melbourne and Sydney offices discuss the ruling and its implications

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has hired former Shearman & Sterling partner Stephen Mostyn-Williams to build a dedicated banking and finance practice in Europe.

Linklaters & Alliance has won the top award at IFLR's European awards ceremony in London, scooping the title of European capital markets team of the year.

The Andersen Legal network started to break up in April after plans to merge the auditor with big five rival KPMG collapsed.

The New Zealand government is in the process of a major reform of the country's securities law. The reform is a three-stage process, consisting of the enactment of a Takeovers Code, the introduction of a Securities Markets and Institutions Bill and a review of securities trading law. The first stage of the law reform package, the introduction of a Takeovers Code, was completed in July 2001 and the second, the introduction of the Securities Markets and Institutions Bill, is underway. (Buddle Findlay has commented on each of these developments in previous issues of IFLR.) The third of the trinity of reforms will be a comprehensive review of securities trading law. In a speech to a commercial law conference, the Minister of Commerce, Paul Swain, recently outlined the scope of the review and reiterated the direction of future securities law reform.

Linklaters is working on a euro 8.5 billion ($7.4 billion) takeover that could change the balance of power in the UK's energy sector.

Jersey off tax haven list

"There has been something of a cultural change, with Japan being more welcoming of foreign investment"

Bond market participants are calling for European securities regulators to drop plans for electronic trading systems regulation. In a detailed response to revised proposals published for consultation by the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR), the Bond Market Association (TBMA) said that moves to regulate the e-trading of bonds are ill-timed and "raise specific and general concerns". TBMA's letter to the secretary general of CESR comes seven months after the group attacked proposals in the initial consultative document, "Proposed standards for alternative trading systems", as "inappropriate and unduly burdensome". In response to these and other criticisms, CESR produced an updated document in January for a further period of consultation that closed on March 14. Speaking for CESR in January, Financial Services Authority chairman Howard Davies said that the committee had taken these comments into account and that significant changes had been made to the definition of alternative trading systems (ATS) and to the proposed standards.