Firm claims a first in East Europe

Baker & McKenzie has advised on a deal which saw the first Western European company listed on an Eastern European stock exchange.

It represented ING Barings and Creditanstaldt Investment Bank as underwriters of a $83 million international offering of shares in Cofinec, a French packaging group.

Following the shares sale, Cofinec was admitted to the Budapest Stock Exchange.

"This is further evidence of the increasing maturity of these regional markets," said Tim Gee, the partner who led Baker & McKenzie's London team.

Gee added: "The challenge of this deal lay in developing an offer structure that satisfied the complex and divergent regulatory requirements in each of France, the US, the UK and Hungary, and in performing and co-ordinating a complex due diligence exercise in each of the four jurisdictions to a strict timetable."