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US power producer CalEnergy has made a hostile bid of £659 million (US$990 million) for UK regional electricity company Northern Electric.

Clifford Chance partner Tim Soutar is returning to London from Hong Kong to bolster the firm's Asian capability in London. He will also assist with the coordination of the firm's global projects group, headed by Rodney Short.

Michael Olislaegers and Axel Haelterman of Loeff Claeys Verbeke, Antwerp and Brussels, provide a detailed overview of the structure and functioning of Europe’s new screen-based securities market for growth companies

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.

The UK's Britannia Building Society has bought a £1.1 billion (US$1.8 billion) mortgage book from Citibank International. The book consists of about 30,000 residential mortgages in the UK. On the same day, Britannia issued £100 million step-up subordinated notes under its MTN programme.

British Telecom has launched a US$21 billion bid for the 80% of US telecommunications company MCI Communications which it does not already own. This is the largest ever foreign takeover of a US company. The combined company will be called Concert.

It has generally been the practice of the Inland Revenue of Hong Kong to disallow payments made on the closure of a business as being non-deductible expenses for the purpose of a profits tax computation. The Hong Kong Court of Appeal recently examined this practice in the context of severance (ie redundancy) payments in The Commissioner of Inland Revenue v Cosmotron Manufacturing (Civil Appeal No. 75 of 1996).

• 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.

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).

For the first time in 20 years, new foreign banks have been awarded full branch status in Thailand. Formerly, only 14 foreign banks were permitted to have branches in Thailand, including the Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo, Banque Indosuez, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, Sakura Bank and the Standard Chartered Bank, among others. On November 7 1996, the Finance Ministry granted full-branch licences to seven new foreign banks, selected by the Bank of Thailand on the basis of the amount of trade with each bank's country base, to upgrade their offshore banking units.