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Lex Mundi, the international association of law firms, has decided to change its policy of excluding firms in New York, London, Washington DC, California, Texas and Illinois. It is now seeking one of the leading firms in each location to join its members. Washington DC's Steptoe & Johnson LLP is the first firm to take advantage of Lex Mundi's policy change to join the international alliance.

US law firm White & Case and Dutch firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek have advised Royal Ahold on its US$2.3 billion global offering. The offering involved listings on the Dutch AEX Stock Exchange, the Swiss Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. The transaction included 51,750,000 shares, also issued as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and Fls 1.495 billion (US$817 million) convertible subordinated notes due 2003, also issued in the form of ADRs. It was one of the first offerings into the US to take account of the euro due to the maturity of the convertible notes being reached in 2003. The offering is intended to help finance the recent purchase by Ahold of Giant Food.

UK law firm Norton Rose is advising on a US$60 million cross-border Ijara leasing facility on behalf of Telekom Malaysia Berhad. The transaction is taking place in the context of recently enforced Malaysian capital controls and involves complex arrangements between investors from south-east Asia and the Middle East. Under the deal, equipment is to be sold then leased back to Telekom Malaysia Berhad using a special purpose vehicle located in Labuan. The transaction was conducted according to Islamic law, so that financing arrangements must be tied to assets rather than taking the form of cash advances with attached conditions. The Malaysian government also imposed a range of capital controls in early September, further complicating the deal arrangements.

The slump in issuance since October 1997 has affected all firms with Asian equities practices with the biggest offerings bringing more comfort to US rather than UK firms. Nick Ferguson reports

The Stock Exchange of Singapore (SES) recently introduced its Best Practices Guide to provide guiding principles on corporate governance for listed issuers.

The Danish parliament has adopted an act harmonizing rules regarding investments made by certain financial institutions (Act No. 490/1998) such as life insurance companies, pension funds and LD pensions. Financial institutions will be subject to limitations with regard to the proportion of their investment assets placed in certain securities. Before the act, investments in shares were limited to 35-40% of the total assets of the institutions. The purpose of the act is to attract venture capital to Danish businesses and to increase the proportion of foreign shares held by the institutions.

The long-awaited promulgation of the new Chinese Contract Law approaches. On September 7 1998, the People's Daily published the draft of a Contract Law containing 441 articles, another step towards unification of domestic and foreign-related legislation in China. The draft contains general provisions on formation, validity, performance and termination of contracts, as well as special provisions on certain types of contracts (eg sales contracts, loan contracts, lease and financial lease contracts, construction contracts and transportation contracts).

Two recent cases have considered the scope of two types of provision commonly found in loan agreements, bond and other debt instruments.

The Commission has proposed a Directive to establish a clear regulatory framework for the distance-selling of financial services within the single market.

On October 1 1998, the Spanish parliament passed a law amending the Securities' Market Law and modifying various other aspects of Spanish securities market-related laws. Among the main features of this new law are the following: