Sullivan & Cromwell has been making the news recently. First it hired Jamie Logie from Norton Rose to establish a UK projects team, now it is hitting the headlines for being 'kinda French'.

The US firm's 16-lawyer Paris office has been instructed by Societe Generale (SocGen) – one of the pillars of France's banking system – to handle its acquisition of investment bank Paribas last week.

Paribas opted to stay faithful to esteemed French firm Rambaud Martel, which last year showed Linklaters' negotiating team the door after the City firm suggested it sign up to its continental alliance.

This is all causing quite a stir in Germany, France and Spain, particularly following US firm Shearman & Sterling's wake-up call to leading German practices last year when Daimler Benz instructed it to advise on local law in its merger with Chrysler.

The Sullivan team in Paris has worked for SocGen in the past, previously advising it on securities offerings. But sources say that the French bank was attracted by Sullivans' ability to offer both expert French and US law advice, so the firm could also handle US regulatory issues arising from the deal.

Are the Americans getting the edge in Europe?
Sullivans' clout is confirmed by an analysis of last year's major UK corporate finance deals, put together by CorpFinUK.

It was one of two US firms – the other being Watchell Lipton Rosen & Katz – to be ranked among the top 10 firms by value of the deals they advised on. It was Linklaters, however, which came out on top, acting on 209 deals with a value of £500,000 or more, in total adding up to £94.59bn of deals.

Freshfields, Slaughter and May, Clifford Chance and Lovell White Durrant followed close behind, with Slaughters completing the most deals of all at 239.

Sun Life organises break-up-
Linklaters' corporate partner Matthew Middleditch has been having fun organising the purchase and break up Guardian Royal Exchange's (GRE) UK and overseas assets.

Middleditch's client Sun Life & Provident, a subsidiary of French insurer Axa, has had a £3.4bn offer accepted by GRE, but that is just the start. In place are agreements with Liberty Mutual Co of the US to buy GRE's US-based assets for £888m.

Alongside, Sun Life plans to sell GRE's other overseas business to Axa, for £972m. Axa, advised by Norton Rose, then plans to sell up GRE's German operations to Axa Colonia, its own German subsidiary, for £588m. Just to make life easier, Sun Life plans to keep hold of GRE's UK and Ireland businesses.

Company secretary Ian Richardson, said: "It was a very complex transaction, but the internal and external legal teams managed to structure it so that it was relatively seamless."

Commenting on Linklaters, Richardson said: "One of the things they were good at was anticipation. They anticipated various changes on the structure of the deal and the tax effects of those structures.

And they were flexible when we changed our thinking on the structure. You tend to think of firms like Linklaters as leviathans, but they were very flexible."