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The offering of stock options by foreign companies to their employees in Portugal has raised a series of questions under the new Portuguese Securities Market Code. The main question is whether the stock options are negotiable securities. If they are, they must be qualified either as a public or a private offer of securities and will have to comply with the public or private offering rules, which involve different procedures and requirements in Portugal.

The post-handover rollercoaster ride for Hong Kong looks like it is heading for another dip as economic growth stalls. Nick Ferguson reports on the divergent strategies taken by law firms in the territory and assesses their likely success in cushioning the landing and preparing firms for when the ride takes off again

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

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.

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.

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

Troubled German microchip-maker Infineon last month called in technology-focused Brobeck Hale & Dorr and Clifford Chance for a $1.4 billion secondary share offering in difficult market conditions. Infineon made the share offering in Germany and the US and through private placements to international institutional investors elsewhere on July 3. The 60 million share secondary offering in the US and Germany was priced at euro 25 ($21) a share.

The UK’s Court of Appeal ruled last month that a bank can avoid payment on a performance bond if it has been acquired fraudulently. Paul Friedman and Philip Young of Baker & McKenzie, London, review the case and assess its implications for banks and bondholders