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The financial services group Collins Stewart Holdings has turned to SJ Berwin & Co for advice on the placing of 32.6 million ordinary shares. The deal values the company at £326 million and admits it to the official list of the London Stock Exchange. Collins Stewart Holding conducts institutional and private client stockbroking, market making, corporate finance, fund management and the supply of on-line financial information. London partner Dominic Adams of SJ Berwin and partner Elizabeth Burnie of Deloittes, also in London, advised Collins Stewart on tax matters.

Clayton Utz has added two tax specialists as the Australian firm boosts its corporate tax team. Mark Friezer joins Clayton Utz in Sydney from Deutsche Bank, where he has worked in the investment banking division on privatization, and project and structured finance deals. Mark Poole joins the Melbourne office from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he has been a partner in the taxation services group for 10 years.

Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton has raided Jeantet & Associés, following the collapse of merger talks between the French firm and White & Case. Tax specialist Pascal Coudin will join Cleary's Paris office in January, increasing the local tax practice to 11 lawyers, with 25 specialists across Europe. Coudin focuses on domestic and international tax work in M&A, joint ventures, and restructurings.

Mounting opposition to June Green Paper

Davis Polk & Wardwell’s New York corporate team is representing Fed Ex Corporation in its $1.2 billion bid to acquire commodities carrier American Freightways

US firm Shearman and Sterling has strengthened its leasing practice by recruiting tax and leasing specialist Stephen Millman from Fulbright & Jaworski

November 16 — Australian firm Freehills is strengthening its domestic tax capability, hiring four lawyers from local rival Blake Dawson Waldron. Tax specialist John Morgan joined as a partner on November 1. Tim Neilson will also become a Freehills partner when he moves from Blake Dawson in February 2001. Esther Iachellini and Rachel Oldfield are also to join the firm.

November 14 — Clifford Chance is launching a joint legal and tax group in Hungary, hiring a PricewaterhouseCoopers specialist tax team to complement its Budapest legal group. The UK firm, known locally as Köves Clifford Chance Pünder, is the first to offer a full service tax practice in the region. The six-strong team includes three tax directors: István Keményfy (VAT), Sándor Szmicsek (e-business and telecoms) and Györgyi Török (M&A and employment).

November 13 — PricewaterhouseCoopers has lost a Japanese tax partner to White & Case in Tokyo. Yasuo Igarashi, a former tax examiner with Japan's National Tax Administration Agency, specializes in Japanese leveraged leasing deals for domestic and foreign companies. He will lead the growth of the corporate tax planning practice at the US firm, which involves M&A, debt restructuring, securitization, and structured finance.

A special report prepared by Bruce A Daigh and Sylvia Dennen PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, New York