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• US firm Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly has opened an office in Geneva. Jean Russotto, managing partner in the firm's Brussels office, will work out of the office of Swiss firm Cabinet Mayor in Geneva. The new office is to complement the work the firm does in Brussels in financial services, corporate, trade and tax law.

Siebe, the UK's largest diversified engineering company, issued US$250 million of global notes under US law. The notes were offered under Rule 144A and Regulation S.

International investment bank Morgan Stanley is to merge with US retail financial services firm Dean Witter, Discover. The merger will create the US's biggest securities firm in terms of capital, with an estimated market capitalization of US$20 billion and total assets under management of US$270 billion.

South American regional conference

UK construction lawyer Tim Steadman will join Clifford Chance as a partner in March. He moves from Baker & McKenzie's London office where he has been a construction partner for the past five years.

Leading international Italian firm Studio Legale Fondato da Francesco Carnelutti has opened an office in Rome. The office will be integrated with the firm's Milan office.

UK firm Allen & Overy is continuing the rapid expansion of its Moscow office. This follows the arrival last year of two lawyers from US firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy's Moscow office.

Canada's Stikeman, Elliott opened an office in Sydney on February 4. Sydney is the firm's 14th office, and the ninth outside Canada. The office will be staffed by Roy Randall, Brian Hansen and Elizabeth Turner.

German firm Pünder, Volhard, Weber & Axster looks set to develop a UK finance practice by appointing senior UK banking and finance lawyers in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. Recruitment advertisements offering partnership and senior assistant positions in a large German practice with international offices have appeared in the UK press with consultants sworn to secrecy. Rumours that Germany's other financial heavyweights Bruckhaus Westrick Stegemann and Hengeler Mueller Weitzel Wirtz were in the market have been denied, but at Pünder, where there are already US and UK lawyers, partner Kersten von Schenk does not deny that moves are underway. "At this stage I have no comments to make," says von Schenk.

Although small in volume compared with fixed-income and equity products, the market for emerging markets OTC derivative instruments looks set to grow. Ovidio E Diaz Espino, of J P Morgan & Co, looks at the products available and the obstacles they still face