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Simmons & Simmons has become the latest UK firm to add a German office to its European network. The City firm has decided that Kaiser, a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) boutique with seven lawyers, will give it the foothold it needs in the German market.

The Amsterdam office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has tempted over a finance partner from The Netherlands' leading independent firm, Nauta Dutilh.

Tweny-six lawyers have quit Brazilian firm Machado, Meyer, Sendacz e Opice to set up a new mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring and banking boutique. The former Machado Meyer lawyers have set up Souza, Crescon Avedissian, Barrieu e Flesch in São Paulo, and are certain they can fill a niche in Brazil's legal market. Alongside the five former Machado Meyer partners — Cristiane Naomi Kaneko Flesch, Luis Antonio Semeghini de Souza, Marcos Rafael Flesch, Maria Cristina Cescon Avedissian and Roberto Barrieu — the new firm will comprise 21 former Machado Meyer associates, seven trainees and three staff.

Baker Botts has hired Christine Ferguson, former counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to strengthen the firm's central Asian team. Partners expect a wave of projects work to flow from a gas pipeline financing in Azerbaijan. Ferguson specializes in debt and equity transactions for natural resources, banking, telecoms, and other projects work in Azerbaijan and Albania, and joins as of counsel to head the US firm's Baku office. Ferguson, a former Moscow-based Clifford Chance partner, joins four local lawyers in Baku. She will use her experience in financing and hydro-carbons in Russia, the Balkans and central Asia, to win regional work.

Davis Polk advises on $1.3 billion stock offering

Liberalization of the Uruguayan telecommunications marketGomez Pinzon & Asociados Bogota

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Clifford Chance have acted on a landmark UK asset-backed transaction, completing a £434 million ($641 million) securitization of the government's military aircraft leasing payments. The deal is believed to be the first securitization of military equipment in the UK, and one of the first aircraft securitizations to be governed by English law.

Nigel Boardman, Slaughter and May Mobile telecoms group Orange has taken a deep breath and finally launched the prospectus for its flotation this month. And as the offering comes ever closer, the list of law firms advising Orange and its owner, France Telecom, gets longer.

Client sues Clifford Chance over conflict

Arthur Levitt, the longest serving chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC, is to step down in mid-February. While his term of office does not officially expire until 2003, it is common for holders of the post to leave government when a new president takes over.