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The merger of two New York energy companies, Con Edison and Orange and Rockland Utilities, announced May 11 1998, is expected to increase efficiency and result in net savings of up to US$50 million a year. Cravath Swaine and Moore, New York, is advising Con Edison in the US$790 million acquisition of O&R. The team of lawyers from Cravath Swaine is headed by M&A partner George Belicic.

On May 13 1998 Debevoise & Plimpton appointed Ric Evans as its presiding partner. He takes over from Barry Bryan, who led the firm for five years and is stepping down as he approaches retirement. Evans is from the firm's litigation department; its strongest area. Within a week of Evans's appointment the firm has declared its intention to expand its UK capabilities. Partners in the firm have confirmed that the London office is looking to make its first UK corporate hire. It is a further sign that Debevoise is shaking off its once conservative image. In the last 10 years the firm wrangled with the opposing forces of modernization and tradition. Before 1989 it had only three offices worldwide: New York, which opened in 1931; Paris, in 1964 and Washington DC, in 1982.

UK firm Norton Rose is ending its association in Hong Kong with local firm Johnson Stokes & Master, with effect from March 31 1999. From this date a clause in the 1976 association agreement will prevent Norton Rose from carrying on a legal practice in Hong Kong for three years. Roger Birkby, Norton Rose managing partner, says: "We have grown more international and we have to work for our clients wherever in the world they want us to. This proved difficult in Hong Kong, because the terms of the association did not allow us to work in areas such as project finance or asset finance." Norton Rose in Hong Kong provides primarily corporate finance, banking and marine litigation services. According to Birkby, several attempts to re-negotiate the terms of the association failed.

Freshfields and Baker & McKenzie advised on more privatization deals than any other firms in 1997. In what was a record year both firms advised on 117 transactions; more than double that of third-placed firm Linklaters & Paines. Last year the total value of privatizations topped US$160 billion, according to league tables published in Privatisation International. Freshfields, which heads the table because of the higher value of its transactions, benefited from a bumper year in Asia, despite the slowdown towards the end of the year.

In Brussels, White & Case has lost a senior partner to a new Baker & McKenzie venture. Aristoteles Kaplanidis had been with Forrester Norall & Sutton for 12 years before its merger with White & Case (see IFLRev, January 1998, page 3). He is now to have executive responsibility for a new centre set up by Baker & McKenzie to provide clients with specialized EU advice. Kaplanidis stresses simply that the offer from Baker & McKenzie came at the right time for him. He says of his three months with White & Case: "There were a lot of changes going on at Forrester which, to be honest, made me think twice about leaving. There were good prospects and during my time there I worked on some very interesting things ... The merger was not the reason I moved."

New York firm Donovan, Leisure has been crippled by the loss of two-thirds of its lawyers to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, the California-based firm which has been expanding aggressively in New York. The two firms had been discussing a merger, but when the talks failed Orrick hand-picked the lawyers it wanted, including 14 partners and chairman Peter Coll. "Our primary interest was the litgation department," says New York managing partner Michael Voldstadt, soon to transfer to the new London office. "But there were other parts of the firm that interested us. The fact is that law firm mergers rarely happen. There was also a conflict issue that took a long time to resolve — eventually we just drifted apart."

A group of top lawyers from White & Case, including the heads of its asset finance practice, have left to join Linklaters' New York office. The lawyers – Marianne Rosenberg, Truman Bidwell Jr, and Robert Smith – resigned on May 8, and were immediately frogmarched from the building. They joined Linklaters' office on Monday, May 11. Rosenberg and Bidwell were the co-heads of White & Case's worldwide Equipment and Facility Finance Group, while Robert Smith specializes in tax and project financing.

The Italian securities regulator, CONSOB, has established new conduct of business rules for EU-based firms providing investment services in Italy through a branch. By Piero Salera of Pavia e Ansaldo, Rome

Without recourse to international arbitration under the BOT Decision, foreign investors have stopped financing Turkish infrastructure projects. International treaties may offer a solution. By H Elizabeth Kroeger and Timothy Kautz of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Frankfurt

Decree 3119 of 1997 regulated, for taxation purposes, the amounts allowed as deductions from net income when associated with articles imported massively as contraband.