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Freshfields has announced the appointment of a second partner in its London US securities group and is set to complete its first US registered securities deal. Don Guiney joins the US securities group from Brobeck Hale and Dorr, the London operation of Boston firm Hale and Dorr and California's Brobeck Phleger & Harrison. "What I did for Brobeck Hale was to establish their joint venture office [in 1990] with a credible securities practice operating for both underwriters and issuers," explains Guiney. "But Freshfields offered the challenge and excitement of working to build a securities practice in the global market."

Bankers Trust, the US's seventh-largest bank, is to buy the country's oldest investment bank, Alex. Brown. The US$1.6 billion stock swap acquisition marks the latest erosion of the US's Glass-Steagall legislation separating commercial and investment banks.

‘Rogue’ traders are an inevitable price paid by the markets for their cultivation of immature and selfish behaviour. By Eric C Bettelheim of Mayer, Brown & Platt, London

Act No 95-277 of March 25 1997 gives French employees the statutory right to participate in private pension fund schemes. By Bernard Carrez of Siméon & Associés, Paris

International commercial arbitration in China and Hong Kong after July 1997 remains an area of law full of uncertainties. Simon G Zinger of Graham & James LLP, San Francisco, looks at the options for parties to disputes

Lloyd's litigation

Hitherto neglected areas of Islamic commercial law can be used to create an Islamic structure for project finance deals. By Mansoor H Khan of Khan & Associates, Lahore, Pakistan

Legislative reform of the German financial markets continues with the publication in April of the long-awaited draft of the Third Financial Markets Promotion Act. The bill is expected to come into force on January 1 1998.

The new law on pledges in Poland should give project finance and other asset-backed lenders the protection they have lacked in the past. By Tomasz Dabrowski and George Macdonald of Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, Warsaw and London

US government bonds are at last being integrated with other major government bonds and Eurobonds into the international clearing system. By Kathleen Tyson-Quah of KTQ Consulting, London, and Seth Weinberger of Mayer Brown & Platt, Chicago