Banking & Financial

We have significant experience in acting for and against financial institutions, including in relation to inter-bank disputes. This wide experience enables our dispute resolution team to respond quickly and pragmatically to the ever-varying disputes that arise as a natural result of life in the international financial markets.

Repos, securities lending, rate and currency swaps and the many other derivatives used to make your money work harder can each give rise to their own particular set of problems when transactions don’t go as planned or when financial markets move unexpectedly. With experience hardened in the heat of more than one credit crisis, our team draws on practical experience, gained domestically and across borders, to guide clients to pragmatic solutions across a wide range of derivatives disputes and institutional insolvencies.

We have particular experience in advising on disputes relating to the enforcement of guarantees (including financial institution unilateral undertakings) both in England and abroad.

In the retail financial services sector product innovation has not always had a happy history. The enhancement of credit transactions by the use of derivatives such as interest rate and currency swaps have presented real challenges in the consumer and small business market, as have equity release mortgage products.  Our team has handled a wide variety of claims focussing on the complexities of such products and whether they were suitable for sale to small businesses and individual consumers, or whether they created an unfair relationship with consumers giving rise to remedies under developing Consumer Protection legislation.

Representative Banking & Financial Work

Examples of our team’s banking & financial experience include:

• Advised the London branch of Landsbankki on securities lending disputes including the first High Court case to apply the European regime for cross-border financial institution insolvency.
• Advised the administrators of an international investment bank on a range of derivatives disputes.
• Advised a Central European financial institution on the defence of a claim taken by a Fortune 100 construction bond issuer against it under a guarantee.
• Advised an Eastern European bank on the defence of a claim taken by the subsidiary of its clearing bank (acting on behalf of noteholders) under an alleged guarantee.
• Advised numerous consumers on the remedies available to prevent or inhibit enforcement of Shared Appreciation Mortgages.