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Dallas-based Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP opened an office in London at the end of April. At the moment staffed by four lawyers, including former Linklaters & Paines senior partner John Edwards, the office will concentrate on capital markets work. According to office managing partner Keith Hughes, this is not a new development for the firm. "We were already here, we are only adding the office to complement our existing presence. We have been doing capital markets transactions in London for several years now," he says.

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.

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

‘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

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."

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

The debt crisis of the 1980s may be over, but the litigation arising from the various sovereign defaults is not. The holding of a recent case, Pravin Banker Associates v Banco Popular Del Peru, 1997 WL 134390 (2nd Cir NY), may have serious repercussions for rescheduling sovereign debt.

Legislative reform of the German financial markets continues with the publication in April of the long-awaited draft of the Third Financial Markets Promotion Act. The bill is expected to come into force on January 1 1998.

The Board of the Central Bank of Chile in its meeting of April 5 1997 resolved to open access to the Formal Exchange Market (made up of banks and authorized foreign exchange brokerage firms) for purchases of foreign exchange to make investments or pay expenses in Chile or abroad in foreign currency, to eliminate other restrictions on investment abroad and to renew the effectiveness of the rest of the foreign exchange restrictions on the entry of capital into Chile.