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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.

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.

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.

The creation of iX The London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse announced on May 3 2000 that they would be merging through the creation of a new company – International Exchanges (iX). The merger aims to offer a unified trading platform using a common market model and regulatory approach – enabling easier trading in European equities.

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.

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).

The SEC’s proposals on fair disclosure have fuelled discussions over the future relations between companies and the market. This month IFLR brings together leading voices in the debate to ask if Regulation FD really is fair

Linklaters completes series of central European bond issues

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.

It may not have the highest headline value for a deal this year, but the sale of Rover car group to the UK's Phoenix consortium for a symbolic £10 by BMW has certainly generated a great deal of publicity. The transaction was notable both for the enormous public and political pressure on participants to close a deal that would save thousands of jobs in the UK and the complexity of putting together a package that could work.