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German sportswear company Adidas is acquiring French rival Salomon, best known for skiing equipment, for Ffr8 billion (US$1.3 billion). The first part of the transaction is the purchase of 100% of Sport Developpement, a private family company owning 39% of Salomon shares representing 56% of the company's voting rights. A public offer will follow. Adidas will become the second largest sportswear manufacturer, behind US rival Nike.

The Prague office of UK firm Cameron McKenna has expanded with the addition of four Czech lawyers. This brings the total to 20 and four paralegals. The office's new senior Czech partner is Petr Skacel, formerly of UK rival Lovell White Durrant and most recently of his own firm. Skacel is a former London consul for Czechoslavakia, and specializes in company and commercial law and commercial litigation. He is joined by three other Czech lawyers: Veronika Nezvalova, Milos Mastny and Lucie Motejzikova.

French firm Bureau Francis Lefebvre has merged its Spanish operations with three Spanish firms. The new firm begins operations in Madrid on October 1 1997. The three Spanish firms are: Briones, Alonso & Martin; Rodes & Sala and Rubio & Carretero. The firm will be known as Briones, Alonso & Martin-Bureau Francis Lefebvre. Partners at the Spanish firms will eventually be integrated into the Lefebvre worldwide partnership. "It is a merger, but it will be spread over time," says Pierre-Sebastien Thill, a partner at Lefebvre in Paris. "There are increasing movements from France to Spain. We want to be able to provide a service to clients, but also to get Spanish clients."

Chicago-based McDermott, Will & Emery has opened a Silicon Valley office. The office will focus on high technology issues and intellectual property. It is the firm's 11th office, and eighth within the US. "The opening of a Silicon Valley office is a natural geographic extension of our high technology and intellectual property practice," says chairman Larry Gerber. "The demand for legal counsel on complex intellectual property issues and international work is so high that we felt it necessary to expand our west coast capabilities."

UK firm Linklaters & Paines overtakes US rival Davis Polk & Wardwell to head this year’s ranking of the leading advisers on international equity issues. But other firms are catching up. Richard Forster and Robert Dwyer report

The merger between big six professional advisory and accounting firms Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse will bring together over 1000 lawyers worldwide, according to figures exclusively compiled by International Financial Law Review. The figures, gathered for the IFLRev 1000 Directory (to be published shortly), give an insight into the extent of the ambitions of the big six firms in the legal field. Alfred Fink, a lawyer in the Paris offices of Coopers & Lybrand, says: "This is the perfect mix. They are in locations where we aren't, such as Russia. Also, Price Waterhouse is very strong in Latin America, but we are stronger in Europe than they are."

• New York's Chadbourne & Parke LLP has made seven lawyers partners. They are: in Singapore, Bruce Rader (corporate and project finance); in Moscow, Mikhail Rozenberg (Russian practice); in Washington DC, Thomas Hechl (Russian practice and project finance); and in New York, Douglas Fried (project finance), Claude Serfilippi (corporate finance), Drew Wintringham (intellectual property) and Nancy Zajac (leasing).

Since 1984, the Statute on the Acquisition of Real Estate by Foreigners in Switzerland, commonly known as the Lex Friedrich, limits the acquisition of real estate by persons domiciled in a foreign country and by foreigners living in Switzerland. The purpose of the statute, set forth in Article 1, is "to prevent foreign control of domestic land". Foreigners were only allowed to acquire land in Switzerland under the conditions set out in the Lex Friedrich.

Recent changes in the rules of capital tax on shares traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange created considerable turmoil. In particular, they affected foreign shareholders because companies have changed the listing of their shares to avoid tax increases.

Two new Acts of Parliament have introduced far-reaching reforms to the rules governing the privatization of state-owned companies in Poland. The first Act, of August 8 1996, abolished the Ministry of Privatizations, and, as of October 1 1996, transferred its functions to the Treasury Ministry. The second Act, of August 30 1996, amended the terms and conditions of the sale and privatization of state-owned companies. It came into force on April 8 1997.