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A major reform of Japanese regulations, allowing companies to award share options to directors, moves regulation closer into line with the US and Europe. By Junko Mori of Asahi Law Offices, Tokyo

New tax incentives in the 1997 Budget approved by Parliament in July focused mainly on the financial sector. Effective for five years from assessment year 1998, they will be:

French firm Thomas & Associés, with 50 lawyers, has announced it will merge with 220-lawyer firm Deloitte et Touche Juridique et Fiscal, part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, on September 1.

The short-term prospects for foreign lawyers in the Japanese legal market are addressed in an official report due out this year. Rob Dwyer listens to both sides of an increasingly acrimonious debate about the place of international firms in a Japan undergoing its financial ‘big bang’

Cassels Brock & Blackwell, Toronto

The law implementing the Investment Services Directive in Italy will have an additional impact on MIF, the Italian Futures Market – it will be privatized. By Piero Salera of Pavia e Ansaldo, Rome

The modest Korean legal market looks unlikely to have to face competition from abroad just yet, despite the government’s public commitment to globalizing the economy. Nick Ferguson reports

Credit Suisse Group, one of Switzerland's biggest banks, has merged with Winterthur, Switzerland's third biggest insurer. The SFr14.3 billion (US$9.3 billion) merger will make the new group Europe's fifth largest financial services group.

A team of lawyers has left German firm Hölters & Elsing, Dusseldorf, to set up their own firm. Corporate partner Rainer Velten and Christian Franz, Bernd Mayer and Markus Jakoby have formed Velten Franz Mayer & Jakoby, with offices in Dusseldorf and Berlin. The firm will specialize in corporate and real estate transactions, and plans to open an office in Frankfurt shortly.

International Financial Law Review understands that Bureau Francis Lefebvre and Briones, Alonso & Martin, leading firms, particularly in the tax field, in France and Spain respectively, have agreed a merger of their Spanish operations. The two will link formally on October 1 1997. The move is likely to be seen as a defensive reaction to the J&A Garrigues/Arthur Andersen merger in Spain, which puts particular pressure on tax firms. A full report on this merger will appear in the October issue of the magazine.