In the fast-paced and highly regulated financial services industry, professionals face daily challenges ranging from complex transactions and regulatory compliance to managing risk and resolving disputes. We understand that you need practical, efficient, and tailored legal solutions to maintain your competitive edge.
We provide comprehensive legal services to the financial services industry, supporting a wide range of financing entities. Whether structuring investments, securing financing, or addressing litigation, we partner with our clients to provide strategic guidance that aligns with their operational goals and mitigates legal risks.
Our experience includes assisting financial institutions with securities and financing offerings, preparing offering materials, ensuring compliance with state and federal securities laws, FINRA regulations, and stock exchange rules, and establishing private investment partnerships, LLCs, and investment funds. We represent buyers and sellers in transactions involving financial institutions and bring decades of experience in public finance for educational, medical, cultural institutions, municipalities, and developers.
We have a significant maritime finance practice, with emphasis in counseling lenders and representing international clients in complex financing structures involving foreign-flagged vessels. And our clients with real estate matters include commercial banks, investment banks, and non-bank lenders involved in traditional and syndicated loans.
We handle transactions with institutions like the Export-Import Bank, OPIC, IFC, MIGA, IDB, and ADB, and represent financial institutions nationwide in litigation, including lender liability claims, claim priority disputes, and bankruptcy matters.
For investment advisers and broker-dealers, we assist with fund formation, regulatory compliance, and ongoing filings under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Our work for pension funds spans venture capital, real estate, and traditional investment fields, offering a full spectrum of legal services for private pension funds.
banking and financial services litigation
We represent banks and financial institutions nationwide in litigation, arbitrations, and administrative proceedings. We assist with loan recoveries, collateral disputes, bank check issues, lender liability defenses, and bankruptcy matters, often serving as national counsel.
Our clients include bank holding companies, asset-based lenders, municipalities, venture capital firms, SBICs, insurance companies, equipment lessors, and floor plan lenders. And in collaboration with our multidisciplinary team, our real estate, environmental, corporate, securities and bankruptcy attorneys assist with related issues that frequently impact lender disputes.
Fiduciary Litigation
We hold a distinguished position as counsel of choice for institutional and individual fiduciaries in sophisticated trust and estate matters. We handle complex disputes involving fiduciary duty litigation, investment prudence claims and portfolio management disputes, administrative oversight and governance challenges, multi-party beneficiary conflicts and relationship dynamics, and complex trust accounting disputes and forensic investigations. Read more here on our Fiduciary Litigation practice page.
FINRA & securities arbitration
Our team is experienced in helping financial services firms and professionals navigate the complexities of regulatory and dispute resolution forums, including proceedings before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the American Arbitration Association (AAA), the Judicial Arbitration and Mediations Services (JAMS), and other mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) venues.
Our lawyers regularly interact with financial regulators, including the FDIC, Federal Reserve, OCC, CFPB, SEC, FINRA, and state banking and financial services regulators around the nation. We maintain valuable contacts and working relationships with government officials in these agencies.
We represent a broad spectrum of clients in the financial sector, including:
- Brokerage firms, brokers and dealers, and financial advisors
- Investment advisors and advisory firms
- Investment companies and their trustees
- Futures commission merchants and their introducing brokers and associated persons
- Banks and other financial institutions
With extensive experience handling FINRA arbitrations and mediating disputes involving intricate legal and regulatory issues, our attorneys bring strategic insight and practical knowledge to every stage of the arbitration process—from pre-claim counseling and case assessment to hearing preparation, discovery and post-award enforcement or appeal.
Clients turn to us for guidance on a range of concerns, including:
- Compliance issues, examinations, and investigations
- Allegations of breach of fiduciary duty or misrepresentation
- Claims involving suitability, unauthorized trading, churning, or failure to supervise
- Promissory note claims and Form U5 defamation
- Regulatory inquiries and enforcement actions
- Expungement proceedings
- Disputes arising from transitions between firms or customer account transfers
banking and financial services transactional & regulatory
Our transactional team has decades of hands-on experience representing lenders and borrowers in a variety of financing transactions. Our national practice works with commercial finance companies, banks, funds and other providers of credit with respect to their most sophisticated financing transactions, including syndicated and bilateral credit facilities, asset-based credit facilities, cash flow credit facilities, equipment leases, participations, and workouts and restructurings. We also work within numerous specialized areas of finance, including acquisition financing, dealer financing, maritime financing, and agribusiness financing. Read more here on our Commercial Finance & Banking practice page.
For banks and other financial institutions, we also frequently advise on regulatory issues, business transactions, corporate governance, and enforcement actions. Our attorneys regularly interact with financial regulators and maintain valuable working relationships with government officials. We help clients in the financial services sector with regulatory applications and filings, anti-money laundering issues, fintech, consumer finance regulation, privacy matters, and state and federal requirements for licensed lenders, money transmitters, and prepaid product providers.
The group also handles transactions from simple branch sales to complex, multistate bank deals, including matters related to:
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Financial service provider relationships
- De novo federal and state bank charters and holding company formations
- Deposit account arrangements, deposit insurance issues, and cash management
- Equity, debt and hybrid securities offerings
- Failed bank transactions, including whole bank and asset acquisitions from the FDIC
- Interstate banking transactions and issues
Our team includes former regulators and prosecutors who can advise on corporate governance matters and internal investigations, including bank policies, procedures and internal controls; insider and affiliate transaction issues; and internal corporate investigations. We also handle enforcement actions including examination and regulatory investigation matters, bank regulatory actions, and criminal referrals, investigations and proceedings.
