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Tax specialists are the best paid in-house counsel, according to a survey conducted jointly by US legal consulting firm Altman Weil Pensa and the American Corporate Counsel Association. The Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey examines the finances of US company legal departments, and reveals that the top earning specialities are tax, and mergers and acquisitions, for which an average in-house counsel receives about US$120,000. Almost half chief legal officers earned between US$200,000 and US$350,000, while nearly 10% earned more than US$500,000. But the departments continued to rely heavily on external firms, with each, on average, using about 48 firms in 1996. This cost departments an average of US$376,162 per lawyer. The highest paid external lawyers were specialists in personal injury defence, earning US$108,151, followed by general litigation lawyers, who received US$100,938. Mergers and acquisitions specialists and intellectual property lawyers earned US$88,985 and US$85,283 respectively.

• US firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has appointed Lawrence Fruchtman. He joins from National Westminster Bancorp, where he specializes in domestic and international banking regulation. He has also worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Bank Security and Other Credit Enhancement Methods

UK firm Freshfields has lost out to rival Linklaters & Paines in a ranking of firms advising on public takeovers in the UK. The table, published by Acquisitions Monthly, places Freshfields third in its top 20 survey. In 1995 Freshfields advised on 31 deals worth a total of £32.2 billion (US$51 billion), while in 1996, it advised on 17 deals amounting to only £9.5 billion. However, the table reveals that in 1996 both the value and number of deals decreased significantly overall. The results put Linklaters & Paines top with £19 billion-worth of deals. Slaughter and May remained in second place, with deals worth £16.3 billion, although it had advised in six more deals than Linklaters. Ashurst Morris Crisp leapt from 13th place to fourth, advising on 15 deals worth nearly US$9 billion. Other big changes in the rankings came from Macfarlanes, which jumped from 14th place to seventh and Simmons & Simmons which slipped four places.

US firm Shearman & Sterling has changed the name of its Budapest office. Hungarian legislation requires the firm to set up a separate Hungarian firm made up of its Hungarian lawyers. The firm is called Bán, S Szabó & Partners and is headed by Chrysta Bán. He is assisted by Péter Szabó, who joins from rival Bogsch & Partners. The firm will continue to cooperate with Shearman & Sterling. John Baltay, head of Shearman & Sterling's Budapest office since 1992, becomes international counsel to the new firm.

International Trade and Legal Services

US firm White & Case is setting up a trade finance and commodity practice in London. Nicholas Budd, partner at the firm's Paris office, will head the group, which was first launched in France.

New procedure for UCIT authorizations

On January 1, the government of Victoria in Australia changed its regulations on law firms. The government felt public confidence was being undermined, for three reasons: the lack of independent regulation, limited information on billing and the restrictive nature of professional practices.

On January 1 1997 a number of amendments to the Federal Act on Debt Collection and Insolvency of 1889 entered into force. The amendments are aimed at updating and clarifying the Act, without changing its structure. In the field of injunctions to freeze assets as a provisional remedy, three major modifications have been enacted with a view to improve the protection for the debtor and the third party holder of assets: