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The Singapore joint law venture between Lovells and Lee & Lee, approved by the attorney general in August 2000, took effect on March 1. The joint venture is structured as a limited company with six directors each from Lovells and Lee & Lee. An executive committee has responsibility for day-to-day management. The joint venture comprises 17 partners and 32 other lawyers all based in Singapore, covering corporate and commercial law, banking, project finance, intellectual property and information technology, as well as business reconstruction, debt rescheduling and insolvency.

Providing heartening news for Latin America's technology sector, Chile's Certifica.com this March became one of the first internet companies on the continent to attract venture capital since US tech-stocks crashed last year. Advised by Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, Certifica completed its first round of financing early in March, raising $3.3 million. Compared to Silicon Valley financings the numbers are small, but according to one investor completion of the deal is a key step in developing Latin America's web economy.

Brigette Baillie at South African firm Webber Wentzel Bowens has been advising a group of South African construction companies and foreign investors on a project to build the country's third road under the government's privatization programme. The Platinum Toll Road (N4W) deal will reach financial closure during April. Dan Reynell, a banking and finance partner at Clifford Chance in London is advising the lending syndicate comprising two South African lead arrangers: Investec Merchant bank and Nedcor investment bank. The other lenders are Asba Bank, Nedcor Bank and Standard Bank.

Slaughter and May will lose its most senior securitization partner this month, as part of a series of wider practice head appointments at the UK firm. Securitization specialist Rupert Beaumont is to retire from the firm at the end of April, leaving Christopher Smith as the most senior partner in the group and coordinator of the capital markets effort at the UK firm.

Paris lawyers have reacted calmly to new rules govering initial public offerings (IPOs) published by the regulator of the Paris Stock Exchange, the Commissions Opérations des Bourses (COB). Responding to growing pressure following the collapse of technology share values and fears that venture capitalists and dot.com founders were able to exploit existing rules at the expense of public investors, the COB last month issued a statement which local lawyers say simply clarifies existing guidelines.

Observers believe that new legislation in Ukraine will help give the country’s banking system progressive, international standards to adhere to. Myron Rabij of Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, Kiev, assesses the reforms

PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal has launched a practice to help businesses manage weather-related risk using weather derivatives, claiming the new global service is the first of its kind.

"We know what the weather market wants"

Allen & Overy is advising Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) and Goldman Sachs International on the second largest initial public offering (IPO) in the UK this year. UK firm Herbert Smith is also working on the $1.25 billion London listing of UK recruitment consultant Michael Page International. Allen & Overy is advising CSFB, which is joint lead manager with Goldman Sachs International, as sponsor, global co-ordinator, sole book runner and underwriters on the UK company's IPO. Other banks involved in the offering are Deutsche Bank, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, HSBC and West LB Panmure.

Ian Garth McGill and Tom Poulton Allen Allen & Helmsley and Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks have agreed to merge. After a 15-year courtship the two firms have finally agreed to formalise its relationship.