Financial Services – Contentious

Our leading investigations and inquiries practice stems from the large number of clients for whom we act in the Financial Institutions sector. Our experience spans the full range of statutory, regulatory and ad hoc investigations and inquiries, as well as disciplinary proceedings. We are accustomed to carrying out major investigations in the UK and abroad and to advising on the civil proceedings including, increasingly, class actions which arise out of such investigations.

We have dealt with numerous Department of Trade and Industry ("DTI"), Financial Services Authority ("FSA"), UK Listing Authority ("UKLA") and Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") investigations, and have played major roles in all the most important inquiries and regulatory investigations over the past two decades. We also have significant experience in relation to non-regulatory investigations, in disciplinary proceedings brought by professional or regulatory bodies, and in class actions and proceedings involving shareholder claims against directors. For many of these matters we work in multidisciplinary teams with specialist lawyers from our Financial Regulation group.

We are frequently involved in groundbreaking initiatives in the financial regulatory area: we handled the first mediation with the FSA under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, and were heavily involved in the highly-publicised attempted multi-party settlement of the numerous firms and individuals operating in the split capital investment trust sector.

Recent confidential matters range from advising in connection with UKLA, FSA, Office of Fair Trading ("OFT"), European Commission, Department of Justice, SFO and HMRC investigations to regulatory issues arising from a variety of matters including sales of payment protection insurance, complaints’ handling and the imposition of bank charges.