Practice Areas | Financial Services

SJ Berwin's Financial Services Group is one of the largest non-contentious specialist financial services groups in the City. It has been dedicated to the sector since 1988. We are recognised as one of the leading European practices in this area and our practitioners include acknowledged leaders in their fields.

We provide a full range of regulatory advice for financial institutions and businesses of all sizes, including investment banks, fund managers, brokers and other intermediaries, custodians and clearing firms, trading platforms and Internet service providers, corporate finance boutiques, insurance firms, pension funds, venture capitalists, arbitrageurs and principal traders.

As well as providing day-to-day advice and assisting in the structuring of new products and services, we lobby and negotiate with legislators and regulators on matters affecting our clients.

We also provide the financial services regulatory side of other areas of the firm's work, including corporate and restructuring transactions in the banking, property finance, media finance, corporate finance, litigation, tax and private equity sectors.

We aim to address issues in the round and for this purpose, various members of the Group use the experience they have gained from working in-house with investment managers, banks, derivatives traders and regulators.

Our clients come from all over the world, with most of the Group's work having an international element.

The London team of seven partners, six assistants, three trainees and a paralegal, backed by a professional support lawyer, work closely with colleagues in the firm's offices in Belgium, Spain, France and Germany. We have adopted this pan-European approach in response to developments within the European securities industry and the increasing harmonisation of financial services regulation at the level of the European Union.

We also have strong relationships with major firms elsewhere in Europe, America, Asia and the principal offshore jurisdictions, which specialise in investment funds and securities law and we regularly work with them to co-ordinate the provision of multi-jurisdictional advice to our clients.

We advise on all aspects of the structure and operation of financial services businesses, including:

• authorisation, regulation and compliance
• trading, clearing and settlement systems
• alternative investments
• derivatives
• investment funds and products
• customer documentation
• disciplinary work and regulatory defence