Search results for

Volatile markets, near defaults, attorney lay-offs, protests, record debt swaps, new capital markets rules, street barricades, law firm break ups. It’s all happening in Argentina. But which firms are faring best in the crisis that doesn’t seem to end? Tom Nicholson went to Buenos Aires to find out

Lovells has pressed ahead with its European expansion plans and announced a merger with French corporate law firm Siméon & Associés. 12-partner Siméon will merge with the UK firm on November 1, boosting Lovells in Paris to 25 partners working with 80 other lawyers. The merger will almost double the UK firm's corporate and tax department just as evidence emerges that many European clients have made severe cuts in their mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and capital markets activities. Six M&A specialists will join Lovells from the French firm, bringing the strength of its Paris office to 13.

Allen & Overy has returned to Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe's Singapore office to collect what it left behind the first time, namely Hooman Sabeti-Rahmati. Allen & Overy hired Ken Aboud from the New York firm in November and is now reuniting him with former colleague Sabeti-Rahmati, an associate who will work alongside Aboud in the firm's securitization practice.

Hengeler Mueller is to lose a partner to one of its allied firms for the first time, forcing the closure of the German firm's Italian desk. Martin Hartl, a Hengeler mergers and acquisitions (M&A) specialist who also runs the firm's Italian advisory division, will join leading Italian corporate, antitrust and securities firm Bonelli Erede Pappalardo, which has a best friends relationship with the German firm, later this year. He is likely to move between October and January, after he completes the deals he is still working on for Hengeler in Berlin.

Europe's lawmakers and regulators stepped away from the harmonization of financial legislation last month after German, Spanish and Italian politicians sunk a last-ditch compromise on pan-European takeover legislation. Corporate lawyers are dismayed at the European Parliament's failure to ratify the deal, hammered out in June after last-minute German objections to the restriction of defensive measures.

Despite having one of the most securitization-friendly legal regimes in Asia, Hong Kong’s originators have not yet embraced the technique. Patrick Lines of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Hong Kong reviews the development of the market and the possibilities for growth

On July 18 2001 Hong Kong’s telecoms regulator published the information memorandum and auction rules that will govern the auction of four 3G licences. Applications to participate in the auction must be submitted on September 17 or 18 2001. Vivianne Jabbour, Gabriela Kennedy and John Hartley, of Lovells’ Hong Kong office, consider some of the most important issues raised by the rules

The Australian government has taken an active and progressive view on financial legislation, this year introducing a series of significant reforms. Don Harding of Freehills, Sydney, assesses the new Corporations Act and the progress being made towards reform of financial services provision

Following a series of crises in the country’s banking sector, and various attempts at reform, the Turkish government has at last made significant amendments to its banking law. Mehmet Irmak Canevi and Halide Çetinkaya of Derman Ortak Avukat Bürosu, Istanbul, examine the changes and ask if the government has finally got things right?

Fixed or floating? When examining a charge over a company’s uncollected book debts it is sometimes hard to say, but in June the UK Privy Council gave a new and helpful opinion in Brumark. Justin Bickle of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, London, examines the case and its implications