Mallesons Stephen Jaques has won the INSTO Distinction Award for "Law Firm of the Year" in 2002. This is the first year these prestigious awards aimed at the institutional investor community have included a "Law Firm of the Year" category.

Acknowledging the award, David Olsson, head of the financial services group at Mallesons said, “ It is a great honour for us all and recognition of our quality service, responsiveness and understanding of the financial services sector and the capital markets generally.”

According to David, 2002 is best summed up as a year of market convergence and growing sophistication. For Mallesons, 2002 also meant being flexible as volatile markets meant a fickle year in investing.

David says market trends have seen the convergence of the debt and equity markets as the increasing popularity of structures such as hybrids has caused the firm’s traditional separation of the debt capital markets team and equity team to disappear, revealing a more unified – and market-pleasing – firm.

“Clients are looking for strength and depth of team – a complete team, which covers the whole market and is responsive to market developments.”

The sophistication of the firm’s team and the capital markets in 2002 is epitomised by the AMP hybrid issue. Mallesons acted for the AMP Group in relation to its A$1.15 billion offer of reset preferred securities and the related issue of perpetual subordinated bonds by AMP UK for an equivalent amount.

The INSTO Distinction Awards Dinner will take place in Sydney next Thursday 13 February.