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Swedish firm Hellström & Partners, Stockholm, announced on January 12 it is excluding star finance partner Peter Sederowsky from the firm. The announcement comes after Sederowsky, who has joined rival firm Setterwalls, announced in his own letters that Hellström & Partners was to cease operating.

Montreal firms McMaster Meighen and Mackenzie Gervais are to merge in March 1998. The merged firm will be called McMaster Gervais and will be one of Montreal's biggest, with about 100 lawyers.

Corporate governance and insider trading rules limit the options for a target's management. Long-term planning is essential. By Philip Rogers of Arnheim & Co*, London, and Christian Altvater of Nehm & Co*, Frankfurt

Price Waterhouse has linked with new Polish law firm Krzysztof Wierzbowski into its international network. In addition, the big six professional services firm has organized a close relationship with new Belgian firm Bogaert & Vandemeulebroeke. Both law firms were formed by lawyers leaving leading practices in their own country, and will maintain a degree of independence to avoid offending their local bar associations.

• Dechert Price & Rhoads has won the services of Susan Ervin, former deputy director and chief counsel of trading and markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US derivatives regulator. Ervin joins the firm's Washington DC office as counsel.

Despite turbulence on the markets, Malaysia's investment-led infrastructure development programme looks quite promising. By Winston Bernard Silva, advocate and solicitor, Singapore

In a very hard year for the Czech economy, the former overly-optimistic comments about the economy have been replaced by more realism and pessimism. But many of the remaining law firms continue to prosper. Paul Lee reports

Law 8/1987 of June 8 regulating pension funds (Planes y Fondos de Pensiones), provides that each fund has a single managing and a single depositary entity. This gives rise to a system of mutual controls between the entities, and the legal regime of the liabilities arising from their actions. The new law allows pension funds to invest in foreign financial assets, where their investments are regulated by the statutory law pertaining to Spanish outward foreign investment and exchange control.

Colombian law affords substantial protection to those who act as commercial agents. Agents may claim compensation on termination of the agency relationship, regardless of the cause of termination, and regardless of the law which governs their contract, so long as the contract is performed in Colombia.

The development of the European asset-backed securities market took a significant step forward in October last year with the launch by Ford Credit of a highly innovative US$5billion global securitization programme. Globaldrive is the first Euro asset-backed programme to be set up by a corporate. It seeks to bring to Ford Credit's asset-backed issues the flexibility and efficiency of a medium-term note programme. The inaugural issue under the programme, an AAA rated Dm1 billion (US$550 million) floating rate issue backed by US dollar wholesale auto receivables, closed successfully on October 15 1997.