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German law firms Droste and Boesebeck Barz & Partners are to merge. The new firm will be called Boesebeck Droste. The merger will be effective from January 1 1997.

The dissolution of the international partnership between Canadian firms Ogilvy Renault and Osler Hoskin & Harcourt was coolly calculated many months in advance by Ogilvy. This much is revealed by an Ogilvy Renault internal memo dating from 1995 obtained by International Financial Law Review which discusses the future of a potential independent Ogilvy Renault office in London. The official reason given by both firms for the split in London in February 1996 was that Ogilvy Renault had announced it was to open an office in Toronto in the summer of 1996. However, the memo states that in mid-1995 Ogilvy Renault was "considering various alternatives" to its arrangements with Osler Hoskin. The memo was addressed by then managing partner of the London office, Michael Fortier (now based in Montreal), to managing partner Raymond Crevier.

Elizabeth Wall, group director of legal services at Cable & Wireless, London, talks to Diana Bentley

• UK firm Linklaters & Paines has added two partners. On December 1, US-qualified Cecil Quillen was promoted from senior associate to partner in the firm's US securities team in New York. The firm has also attracted the services of Fiona Rice, a local partner in the Singapore office of rival Allen & Overy.

At present the Swiss criminal code (SCC) does not contain an express provision making the manipulation of stock prices a criminal offence. However, this will change with a new provision, Article 161bis SCC, scheduled to come into force in the course of 1997. This sets out the kinds of manipulation of stock prices punishable by law and reads as follows:

On November 11 1996, South Africa's new Labour Relations Act took effect. The Act, to a large extent, replaced the prior South African labour law framework. The primary focus of the Act is the regulation of relations between trade unions and employers. However, to a lesser extent, the Act also regulates important aspects of the relationship between employers and individual employees. The Act encompasses all sectors of the labour force, in contrast to the predecessor legislation which did not cover employees in the agricultural, domestic services or public sectors.

Under present Swedish legislation a company is prohibited from signing for, acquiring or taking as security shares issued by the company itself or by a parent company. This rule, originally justified by the need to protect the creditors of a company, was introduced in 1895 and has been restated in subsequent legislation for a variety of reasons.

The Act on bonds which came into force on August 20 1995 deals with particular types of bonds such as convertibles. Since then, no convertible bonds have been publicly offered by Polish issuers and quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. However, a few convertible bond issues are now known to be in preparation. Convertible bonds need to be attractive securities to satisfy both corporate and financial needs (eg, they may serve as protection against an unexpected takeover; the public offer or private placement, as the case may be, of convertible bonds is often easier and more successful than that of standard bonds).

The Danish securities market was reformed by the Danish parliament in December 1995. The Act on Securities Trade and the Act on Stockbroker Companies (together with amendments to the Banking Act and the Mortgage Credit Act) implemented the Investment Services Directive (93/22) and the Capital Adequacy Directive (93/6). The Act came into force in 1996 and the relevant executive orders under the Act have been issued, so that we also now have some impression of the first effects of the reform.

The Central Bank of Cyprus has drafted a bill containing provisions for the harmonization of the Cyprus banking system with that of the EU, and the establishment of a unified framework for the effective operation of banking transactions. It is expected that the bill will be passed by the Cyprus parliament in early 1997.