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Piero Luongo, legal counsel of Istituto Mobiliare Italiano, talks to Samantha Wigham

As investors are no doubt aware, 1997 is shaping up to be year of major privatizations among state-owned Spanish companies. This process has already begun with the recent public offering of the remaining state-held shares of Telefónica of España.

On July 1 1993, Sweden enacted new competition legislation. The Swedish Competition Act broadly conforms to the rules applying in the EU under the Treaty of Rome. As for notification of acquisitions, the Competition Act provides that the acquisition of a company or business (the object) in Sweden must be notified to the Swedish competition authority, Konkurrensverket, if the aggregate turnover of the purchaser and the object exceeds Skr4 billion (US$542 million) during the preceding business year. If the purchaser belongs to a group, the aggregate turnover of the entire group will be decisive when establishing the purchaser's turnover.

The Danish rules on insider trading are contained in the Securities Trading Act (STA) of December 20 1995 which entered into force on May 1 1996 and are basically the same as the rules contained in the earlier Securities Market Act, which implemented Directive 89/592 of November 13 1989 coordinating regulations on insider dealing. The Directive is a Minimum Directive and the provisions of the STA are more stringent than those laid down by the Directive.

Earlier (see International Financial Law Review, October 1996, page 46) briefings on changes brought about by the EU Company Law Amendment Act 1996 focused on those provisions which have a particular effect on the Austrian banking sector. The following seeks to provide a more general outline of the contents of the Act.

Hilton Hotels, the US hotel and gambling group, is making a US$6.4 billion hostile bid for ITT, its largest rival, in an attempt to create the world's biggest hotel and gambling company.

CONSOB, the Italian regulator, is granted by LD No. 415/96 (enacted to implement the ISD Directive) the power to regulate trading of listed financial instruments in official markets. On December 10 1996 CONSOB approved Resolution 10358 which, in some cases, imposes trading of listed financial instruments in official markets and, in other cases, lays down the conditions for over-the-counter (OTC) transactions.

The May 1996 edition of International Financial Law Review (see page 50) reported that the New Zealand government planned to abolish the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The government has recently announced that it has scrapped this plan.

Spanish firms J & A Garrigues and Arthur Andersen ALT have completed their merger with partners approving the new partnership on January 31 1997. The firm will be known as J & A Garrigues Andersen with Andersen staff relocating to Garrigues' offices as much for symbolic as practical reasons. "We want to differentiate them clearly and move them away from where they were," comments Ramon Lladó, partner from the former J & A Garrigues.

• 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.