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Competition between the offshore centres is increasing, especially in the Caribbean. Most are very keen to prove their credentials against money-laundering and cut the risk of scandals. Clare Hepburn reports

The Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) is preparing the market for a 'big bang' by implementing a major deregulation which will free the fixed trading brokerage commissions and allow stockbrokers to offer and set their fees according to supply and demand. The shake-up could be implemented by July 1997, two years after Cyprus Stock Exchange Law was passed. At present, investors pay a 1% brokerage commission when buying securities, plus 0.15% stamp duty levied by the government, and a further 1% brokerage commission when selling their positions. The fee paid by the brokers to the CSE was most recently reduced to 1 per thousand or 10% of the amount the brokers collect from investors for both inside and outside transactions.

The piecemeal reforms of US banking regulations do open genuine opportunities to foreign banks. Connie M Friesen and David Nissenbaum of Richards & O’Neil, LLP, New York, explain

Grand Metropolitan and Guinness are merging to form GMG Brands, the world's largest spirits and wine group. The group will be worth around £23.8 billion (US$38.6 billion), but the merger has been challenged by rival drinks companies who believe it is anti-competitive.

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