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It is expected that UK firms will win most, if not all, of the five Singapore joint-venture licences on offer. The successful candidates will be announced on July 30.

Deacons and Graham & James have called an end to their 10-year association. As of July 1 Deacons Graham & James will cease to exist. They are parting company after coming to a "crossroad in [their] respective strategies", said Mark Roberts, Deacons' managing partner, in a statement to the press.

The London office of White & Case has secured the services of Maurice Allen, the founder of Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ London practice. Allen arrives with another three partners from Weil Gotshal: Martin Hughes, Rachel Hatfield and Mark Western.

Uzbekistan adopts single currency exchange rate The Uzbekistan government has taken the long-awaited first step towards liberalizing the country's harsh currency controls. In typical Uzbek fashion, this first step — contained in Resolution No. 171 of the Cabinet of Ministers "On the Improvement of the Procedure for Accounting and Reporting with Respect to Currency and Export-Import Operations," April 28 2000 — is extremely limited and, in some respects, even secretive. Nonetheless, the fact that the government has taken any action at all is likely to be welcomed by foreign investors and multilateral financial institutions, which have pressured the government for some time to lift its controls and make the local currency — the soum — freely convertible.

New capital market initiative launched The New Capital Market (NCM) is an initiative by the New Zealand Stock Exchange designed primarily to assist small and medium-sized companies in raising capital for new growth-oriented businesses. It is envisaged that strong incentives – in particular simplified disclosure and reduced listing and brokerage fees – will encourage companies to enter the NCM and eventually graduate to full listing on the main board of the stock exchange.

European Energy Exchange and the Swiss Stock Exchange Act With the deregulation of the European energy markets, prices for energy have become increasingly volatile. This has led power companies to use financial instruments to offset price risks (hedging). While energy exchanges in the Netherlands and Scandinavia have already emerged, the evolution of the European Energy Exchange (EEX) is a fairly recent development.

EU directive on taxation of savings interest The proposed EU directive on the taxation of savings interest is now stalled by disagreements between the different EU member states over the desirability of imposing withholding tax on non-resident investors in the absence of information exchanges between their tax authorities. The proposal has attracted much criticism from financial institutions and the UK government, which has threatened to veto its adoption in its current form. EU government heads and finance ministers are, however, optimistic that a planned meeting in Brussels in June will result in a consensus being reached.

New Portuguese capital markets code introduced After many months of work and research by the regulatory authorities into the Portuguese capital markets, Decree Law 486/99 of November 13 was published, implementing the new Portuguese Capital Markets Code (Código de Valores Mobiliários or CVM).

Tax rules revised On January 1 2001, a new personal income tax regime will come into force in the Netherlands. The new rules completely overthrow the present system of income tax for private individuals by introducing a revolutionary concept of passive income taxation. Whereas now dividend and interest income is taxed at the full marginal rate of up to 60%, under the new rules tax on all investment income will be completely abolished and substituted by a flat 30% tax on a 4% deemed income on net wealth, which effectively resembles an annual net wealth tax of 1.2%. The new rules will generally not apply to non-residents. The domestic dividend withholding tax rate on dividends of 25% (for non-residents) will continue to apply.

UK firm Ashurst Morris Crisp is acting as lead counsel to Atlantic Telecom on its proposed acquisition of First Telecom Group. The deal values the target company at £520 million ($775 million) and will be paid in new Atlantic ordinary shares.