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Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and US rival Brown & Wood have acted on the euro 17.5 billion ($15.7 billion) multi-currency bond offering by France Telecom, the largest corporate bond offering to date. Clearys, led by John Brinitzer, advised lead managers BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. Brown & Wood advised France Telecom. Representing France Telecom out of Brown & Wood's New York office were partners Jack Kantrowitz and Nicholas Brown. Partner John Russell was advising from the firm's London office.

Davis Polk & Wardwell and Allen & Gledhill have advised on Asia's first hybrid tier-one financing. The deal, for the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), was welcomed by investors despite launching into fragile markets. Davis Polk, advising Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs on the international tranche, and Allen & Gledhill, advising DBS on the domestic tranche, are the first firms to work on such a deal in Asia and worked closely with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to establish the regulatory structure.

A poor year for capital markets work and the prospect of a slowing economy are adding to the pressures on Portuguese law firms to define their strategies. Thomas Williams reports from Lisbon on what firms are looking to do next

On February 21 2001, Uruguay enacted Law No. 17,296 which, among other things, puts an end to the state monopoly over telecommunications services and creates a regulatory entity over telecommunications operations. A summary of the main aspects of the Act follows below.

Brigette Baillie at South African firm Webber Wentzel Bowens has been advising a group of South African construction companies and foreign investors on a project to build the country's third road under the government's privatization programme. The Platinum Toll Road (N4W) deal will reach financial closure during April. Dan Reynell, a banking and finance partner at Clifford Chance in London is advising the lending syndicate comprising two South African lead arrangers: Investec Merchant bank and Nedcor investment bank. The other lenders are Asba Bank, Nedcor Bank and Standard Bank.

The Singapore joint law venture between Lovells and Lee & Lee, approved by the attorney general in August 2000, took effect on March 1. The joint venture is structured as a limited company with six directors each from Lovells and Lee & Lee. An executive committee has responsibility for day-to-day management. The joint venture comprises 17 partners and 32 other lawyers all based in Singapore, covering corporate and commercial law, banking, project finance, intellectual property and information technology, as well as business reconstruction, debt rescheduling and insolvency.

Slaughter and May will lose its most senior securitization partner this month, as part of a series of wider practice head appointments at the UK firm. Securitization specialist Rupert Beaumont is to retire from the firm at the end of April, leaving Christopher Smith as the most senior partner in the group and coordinator of the capital markets effort at the UK firm.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal has launched a practice to help businesses manage weather-related risk using weather derivatives, claiming the new global service is the first of its kind.

Paris lawyers have reacted calmly to new rules govering initial public offerings (IPOs) published by the regulator of the Paris Stock Exchange, the Commissions Opérations des Bourses (COB). Responding to growing pressure following the collapse of technology share values and fears that venture capitalists and dot.com founders were able to exploit existing rules at the expense of public investors, the COB last month issued a statement which local lawyers say simply clarifies existing guidelines.

Observers believe that new legislation in Ukraine will help give the country’s banking system progressive, international standards to adhere to. Myron Rabij of Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, Kiev, assesses the reforms