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Brown & Wood, Blake Dawson Waldron, Allen Allen & Hemsley and Mallesons Stephen Jaques are all advising on Australia's first global bond issue which is backed by non-US mortgages. Australian bank Westpac lauched its US$1.4 billion offering on June 4 with ratings from Moodys, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch, the first time a bond issue has been rated by all three agencies.

British company Computacenter has been floated on the London stock exchange, with a global offering of 44,304,014 ordinary shares, including a Rule 144A placing in the US. The value of the transaction was £1.15 billion (US$1.84 billion) with Goldman Sachs acting as global coordinator. UK firm Linklaters & Paines represented Computacenter. Partners Matthew Middleditch and Charlie Jacobs worked on the flotation, providing advice on English and US law. UK firm Freshfields acted for Goldman Sachs with a team headed by partners Christopher Joyce (corporate) and US partner Tom Joyce (finance).

The US$231 million Merida III project, one of the first independent power plants in Mexico, reached financial close on June 19. The project is being developed to sell power to the Mexican national electricity utility, Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE). Lead sponsor AES Corporation with Nichimen Corporation in Japan and Grupo Hermes of Mexico looked to US firm Chadbourne & Parke. New York partner John Baecher and Peter Fitzgerald in Washington led the team. Also representing the sponsors were Antonio Franck and Ignacio Pesqueira of Franck, Galicia, Ducland & Robles in Mexico City.

Italy continues to attract foreign law firms with UK firm Ashurst Morris Crisp announcing a strategic alliance with Milan-based Negri-Clementi Montironi & Soci. The agreement, based on an equal relationship, involves reciprocal exclusive referrals. Ian Nisse, Ashurst's managing partner, says: "This alliance is strategically based and strongly client driven for both firms." Ashurst, with offices in Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt, is trying to build a pan-European partnership.

Arthur Andersen has abandoned plans to acquire Wilde Sapte, the city law firm it settled on after an 18-month search. Because of the defection of some of Wilde Sapte's most highly-regarded lawyers, Andersen felt the nature of the deal had substantially changed. Although they had originally voted in favour of the transaction, Wilde Sapte asset finance specialists David Smith and Mario Jacovides resigned shortly afterwards to join UK rival Allen & Overy. Also moving to Allen & Overy was top leasing partner Graham Smith. Several other Wilde Sapte stars were reported to be in talks with rival firms, including Philip Rocher, a litigator, and shipping finance head Robert Dibble.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has published its Emu protocol, an innovative answer to a number of issues raised by European Economic Monetary Union. The document, published in May, is intended to assist the modification of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives contracts based on ISDA's master agreement. With tens of thousands of these contracts outstanding all over the world, dealing logistically with Emu is a great challenge. Parties to the contracts are facing a number of problems, such as continuation of their contracts or the disappearance of current price sources.

New benchmarks in corporate loan securitization (collateralized loan obligations, or CLO) technology were set when the Structured Finance Group at the London branch of The Sumitomo Bank completed their Aurora CLO on April 8 1998. The £1.395 billion (US$ 2.3 billion) issue of floating rate notes by Aurora Funding was supported by a structure which:

Potential moratoria on payments of foreign currency to overseas persons need not necessarily worry exporters. They can structure to protect their interests. By Andrew O’Keeffe of Simmons & Simmons, London

The problems in the Indonesian economy have drawn attention to the question of how to enforce bills of exchange and commercial paper. This article provides a guide. By PDD Dermawan of Dermawan & Co, Jakarta

Clifford Chance has scored a major coup by poaching US lawyer Bruce Bean from the Moscow office of Coudert Brothers where he was managing partner. A New York and California qualified corporate lawyer, Bean joins Clifford Chance as a partner in the firm's Moscow office, which is staffed by 57 lawyers, including five partners. With experience of advising multinationals on inward investment, advising investment banks on securities issues by Russian corporates and international oil and gas companies on their activities in the country, he will be in charge of developing the office's corporate and US multinational practices.