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UK firm Cameron McKenna is to incorporate US firm Faegre & Benson's Almaty team into its Kazakstan office. Cameron McKenna adds Faegre's resident partner, Thomas Johnson, and three local Kazak lawyers to its Almaty office, which will now have a total of eight lawyers. This is a further rationalization of the Kazakstan legal market following the merger of Pepper Hamilton & Scheetz's Almaty office with Coudert Brothers (see International Financial Law Review, March 1998, page 4). Faegre & Benson has decided to withdraw from central Asia. James Stephenson, a partner in Minneapolis, says that opening a Kazakstan office in 1992 was based on one particular project. The firm maintained a presence in Almaty but did not have long term objectives in the region. "We reached a point where we needed to invest additional resources in order to capitalize on the office's success," he says. "It is our only office in the region and it simply didn't fit into our strategy." Stephenson says the firm's international practice will concentrate on serving US clients in Europe. Faegre & Benson has an office in Frankfurt and formed an association with UK firm Hobson Audley Hopkins & Wood in August 1997.

Partners at UK law firm Wilde Sapte have voted to join the Arthur Andersen legal network. A heads of agreement document will be signed by early April. In London, Wilde Sapte will merge with Garretts, Andersen's existing UK firm. Andersen has been searching for a partner in the UK to bolster Garretts, and is understood to have approached other UK firms including Simmons & Simmons and Lovell White Durrant. It is likely Wilde Sapte's foreign offices will merge with Andersen's global network (which includes some 950 non-tax lawyers; see International Financial Law Review November 1997, page 25), although there is doubt over the future of the firm's Paris office. The managing partner of Wilde Sapte's office in France, Thomas McDonald, left SG Archibald in protest when it linked with Andersen. McDonald declines to comment.

UK firm Freshfields is starting a joint venture with a Japanese lawyer, or bengoshi. The joint venture is the closest form of cooperation allowed by Japanese bar rules between bengoshi and foreign firms. Freshfields will become the fifth law firm to form a joint venture, after French firm Gide Loyrette Nouel and US firms Baker & McKenzie, Sullivan & Cromwell and White & Case. Restrictive legal rules mean foreign law firms in Tokyo are forbidden from employing bengoshi, or offering them partnerships. The joint venture allows firms to share offices and other expenses, but they must keep all income separate. There are many foreign law firms in Japan but joint ventures are rare because foreign lawyers think the system is flawed. Ruth Markland, Freshfields' managing partner in Asia agrees to a point. "It is unsatisfactory because it would be ideal to be able to offer full partnership," she says. "But we feel the time is right to have a Japanese capability and this is the structure that is allowed." Markland expects the planned economic reform will lead to greater demand for legal services in Tokyo.

UK firm Nabarro Nathanson has strengthened its presence in Paris. Partner and qualified avocat Frank Lipworth will set up his own firm, Cabinet Lipworth, which will operate as a Nabarro affiliate. The practice will concentrate on non-contentious commercial work with a view to breaking into the lucrative mergers and acquisitions market. Lipworth will work alongside Myriam Smith, a French avocat, using the office as a service post for Nabarro's London clients.

UK firm Norton Rose is disbanding its national group of associated firms, the Norton Rose M5 Group, to concentrate on an international strategy. The group unanimously agreed to wind up its formal links by the end of July 1998. One possibility was that the group would eventually become a single national firm. However, a decision was taken not to merge in 1993, and the firms began to pursue their own individual strategies, most notably when two members of the group, Booth & Co, and Addleshaw Sons & Latham merged last year.

On February 19, the Bank of Botswana liberalized exchange controls. The liberalization falls short of a complete abolition of exchange controls, although this may occur in the next six to eight months.

Halliburton, the second-largest company in the oil services industry, is to buy Dresser Industries, the third-largest, in a US$8.1 billion stock swap. The deal will create a company with US$16 billion in combined revenue, and relegates Schlumberger, at present the world's largest oil-services group with revenues of US$11 billion, to second place. The move is expected to lead to further consolidation within the industry. US firm Vinson & Elkins, Houston, represented Halliburton. Lead partner was mergers and acquisitions specialist Bill Joor. The Houston office was assisted by a team in the Washington DC office, working on antitrust issues and led by Ky Ewing. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, New York, advised Dresser Industries. Dennis Block, mergers and acquisitions partner, coordinated the lawyers.

As US firms target the international asset-backed securities market, Richard Forster and Stephen Mulrenan examine the firms behind the deals of 1997 and the prospects for securitization in 1998.

Taking of evidence in Switzerland for a trial abroad is governed by three different bodies of law:

Japan’s legal system has a range of alternatives for insolvency proceedings. Bankruptcy is by far the most common. By Naoaki Eguchi and Yoshiaki Muto of Tokyo Aoyama Law Office and Jeremy Pitts of Baker & McKenzie, Toyko