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The UK's Britannia Building Society has bought a £1.1 billion (US$1.8 billion) mortgage book from Citibank International. The book consists of about 30,000 residential mortgages in the UK. On the same day, Britannia issued £100 million step-up subordinated notes under its MTN programme.

Transnational Tort Litigation

South Africa's largest industrial company and one of the world's top five brewers, South African Breweries, made a US$362 million offering of ADSs into the US and internationally. The offering was conducted under Rule 144A and Regulation S. The lead managers were Robert Fleming and Cazenove & Co.

P&O, the UK shipping firm, is set to merge its ocean container business with that of Dutch counterpart Royal Nedlloyd. The merged entity, P&O Nedlloyd Container Line, requires EU regulatory clearance and will have assets of US$1.5 billion.

Clifford Chance partner Tim Soutar is returning to London from Hong Kong to bolster the firm's Asian capability in London. He will also assist with the coordination of the firm's global projects group, headed by Rodney Short.

Belgian firm Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck & Kirkpatrick, France's Siméon & Associés and Wessing Berenberg-Gossler Zimmerman Lange of Germany have entered into a cooperation agreement. The firms will establish a European Economic Interest Grouping, called the Conference of European Lawyers. This will form the basis of future cooperation in all fields of law.

Jeremy Xiao, who in August became the first Chinese citizen to qualify as a Hong Kong solicitor, will become a partner in the Hong Kong office of UK firm Herbert Smith.

US firm Rogers & Wells has lost the head and 12 other members of its Latin American group, which specializes in cross-border work and project finance. The head of the group, Roberto Dañino, together with two other partners, Paul Dwyer and Jorge Alers, have left the firm for rival Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington DC. Dañino is a Peruvian lawyer and former general counsel of the Inter-American Investment Corporation. "We think that the market ahead of us is going to be dependent on DC-based mutilateral organizations such as OPIC and Eximbank and we had to be based in the headquarters of a top firm in the city," says Dañino.

Toronto-based Goodman Phillips & Vineberg has launched its third office in Asia, opening in Singapore in December. Goodman Phillips has had an office in Hong Kong for some 25 years and is the only Canadian firm with an office in Beijing.

The new presence of foreign law firms aggressively staking out territory in Germany is putting pressure on local firms. A second wave of mergers seems to be beginning. Samantha Wigham reports