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US law firm White & Case and Dutch firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek have advised Royal Ahold on its US$2.3 billion global offering. The offering involved listings on the Dutch AEX Stock Exchange, the Swiss Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. The transaction included 51,750,000 shares, also issued as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and Fls 1.495 billion (US$817 million) convertible subordinated notes due 2003, also issued in the form of ADRs. It was one of the first offerings into the US to take account of the euro due to the maturity of the convertible notes being reached in 2003. The offering is intended to help finance the recent purchase by Ahold of Giant Food.

French firm Gide Loyrette Nouel is to lose four lawyers to the Linklaters & Paines Paris office. The lawyers are part of Gide's mergers and acquisitions and litigation team. Their arrivals will double Linklaters' total of corporate partners, bringing it up to eight. Gide partners Thierry Vassogne, Marc Loy and Olivier Diaz and senior associate Arnaud de la Cotardiere will all become partners at Linklaters, with Vassogne becoming co-head of the Paris office alongside Jean-Marc Lefevre. Vassogne, a high profile litigator will no doubt be missed by the firm, despite what Xavier de Roux, Gide Loyrette Nouel partner describes as "conflicts of interests and difficulties between partners" in the firm's M&A department. He says: "Thierry Vassogne has been with the firm for twenty years and of course we all like him, but our M&A department has more than fourteen partners, and this is something which happens in law firms. We have had seven partners leave in thirty years."

Australian firm Allens Arthur Robinson has opened a new office in the Lujiazui Pudong New District of Shanghai. It is the first international firm to move into Shanghai's new financial district, and the first Australian firm to be granted a licence in Shanghai. The office will initially be staffed by five lawyers. Linklaters & Alliance is hot on their heels. Its Pudong office will officially open on October 9. Linklaters' new office will have 3 lawyers and 4 other fee earners with PRC lawyer Ming Zu its senior representative in Pudong along with partner Zili Shao, who was recruited from Allens Arthur Robinson in July, to head Linklaters' China practice.

Although the system being used by the Hong Kong Law Society for approving foreign lawyers was not what was contemplated by the legislation, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal has accepted its validity. The Legal Practitioners Ordinance clearly contemplates that the Law Society should assess whether an applicant to be admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong has the necessary qualifications (largely practical experience) before issuing a certificate stating which further examinations the applicant must pass before being admitted. However, the Law Society had begun a system, which it deemed to be more flexible because the exams were only carried out once a year, whereby it issued a certificate relating to exams before assessing whether the applicant had the requisite practical experience. The Court held that though this was contrary to the intention of the Ordinance, the Law Society's "flexible" procedures were acceptable.

Stephen Mulrenan reports from Tokyo where the changes to the permitted activities for registered lawyers have left foreign lawyers frustrated

The slump in issuance since October 1997 has affected all firms with Asian equities practices with the biggest offerings bringing more comfort to US rather than UK firms. Nick Ferguson reports

Richard Parolai and Michael Elland-Goldsmith of Clifford Chance, Paris, advisers to CSFB

Yusaku Ono of Hamada & Matsumoto, Tokyo discusses the new tax laws for Japanese issues and the IPMA operating manual which aims to ease market compliance

Two recent cases have considered the scope of two types of provision commonly found in loan agreements, bond and other debt instruments.

Goldman Sachs’ strategy for Shell — to obtain funding at the lowest cost through currency swaps — has failed so far before the Canadian courts. Ron Schlumpf of CIBC Wood Gundy, Toronto explains the regulatory risks of derivatives