We’re trusted counsel on conduct and prudential matters to financial services and market participants, including manufacturers, distributors and purchasers of financial products and suppliers of associated technologies and other services. Our clients include established institutions and participants, and new entrants to financial services markets.
Sectors in which our clients operate include banking, capital markets, consumer credit, fintech, financial services assets, funds and investment management, life and non-life insurance, private equity, payment services and electronic money.
Our work covers the income / capital-generating (e.g. customer-facing) activities of firms, as well as their ‘own account’ issues, and all the associated commercial and corporate operations in both cases. Any of these may have implications for firms’ conduct, capital, operational resilience and regulator relationships. We handle arbitration and litigation involving financial services firms and advise on the regulatory ramifications.
We also advise on environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability and responsibility matters, which are increasingly subject to regulatory requirements and investor demands.
Clients’ income / capital-generating activities on which we advise include acting for UK banking groups on commercial loan transactions, and acting for private equity investors.
Working closely with clients’ compliance, legal and risk teams, we have extensive experience in advising on own account issues for financial services clients, addressing issues across the spectrum of regulatory supervision and enforcement processes and procedures, including the ‘controllers’ (change in control) regime, investigations and notifications, the ‘senior managers and certification regime’ (SMCR), ‘Solvency II’, ‘skilled person’ reports, and whistleblowing.
We represent a major challenger bank on its HR and employment issues, and have also advised on enhancing its senior employee risk management programme, including via its UK D&O coverage.
We advised a household-name consumer goods business on a strategic project to distribute, as an appointed representative, credit products alongside sales of goods. This was a significant new departure for the client and involved extensive work on policies and procedures, including as to contractual governance, financial promotions and IT systems and controls, and customer-facing documents.
We have advised an innovative high-growth payment institution about the impact of the safeguarding regulations on its novel business model and assisted it with relevant elements of its FCA authorisation application.
We advised a leading supplier of IT-based analytics for fund performance on its contractual terms with an authorised investment manager, protecting commercial rights and interests but without risking any undertaking of regulated activity.
The outcome of the Employment Tribunal claim brought by Gulnaz Raja against Starling Bank Limited (1) (Starling), and Matthew Newman (2) was reported last month.
This article is the second in a series to help firms take a practical approach to complying with the ‘cross-cutting rules’ within the new ‘Consumer Duty’ (CD) framework. The article summarises what it seems the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seeking to achieve from the applicable rules (section 2 below) and potential complications arising from legal considerations (section 3).
Claims arising from interest-only mortgages have been farmed in volume. Many such claims to date have sought to drive a narrative that interest-only mortgages are an inherently toxic product and brokers were negligent simply for suggesting them. Taylor is a helpful recalibration, focussing instead on what the monies raised by the mortgage product were being used for and whether the client understood the inherent risks.
Created at the end of the Brexit transition period, Retained EU Law is a category of domestic law that consists of EU-derived legislation retained in our domestic legal framework by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. This was never intended to be a permanent arrangement as parliament promised to deal with retained EU law through the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (the “Bill”).
This article is the first in a series aimed to help firms get to grips on a practical basis with the ‘cross-cutting rules’ within the new ‘Consumer Duty’ framework.
The Chancellor’s recent mini-budget provided a significant announcement for business as it was confirmed that the off-payroll working rules (known as “IR35”) put in place for public and private sector businesses from 2017 and 2021 will be scrapped from April 2023.
Bridget Tatham, a specialist defendant insurance lawyer at Browne Jacobson has been honoured at this year’s Birmingham Black Lawyer (BBL) Excellence Awards, having been named Lawyer of the Year. Bridget was also shortlisted for BBL’s Diversity Champion 2022.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has released a report setting out the impact of new and changing regulations arising from the pandemic on small businesses across the UK.
Browne Jacobson has announced its financial results for 2021-22 with revenues up 11 per cent year-on-year to £94m, up from £85m. It marks the 13th consecutive year of growth with a 59 per cent increase in revenues since 2015 (£59m).
As has been widely reported this week, some 3,000 UK workers are taking part in a six month trial to assess the viability of a four-day working week without any reduction in their normal pay.
In anticipation of the adoption of the Building Safety Bill, our specialist compliance and regulatory team will give an overview of the measures proposed in the Bill.
Financial crime is an increasing threat to all organisations. The modes of facilitating fraud have become easier. Being a victim of fraud as an organisation risks significant financial consequences, but also serious reputational harm and loss of stakeholder confidence.
In March the government proposed a number of changes to the Building Safety Bill. The new amendments propose additional protection for leaseholders to prevent them from being charged for cladding work if they own up to three properties.
The Presidents of the Employment Tribunals England and Wales and Scotland have issued a new road map for 2022-23, providing an update on the resourcing challenges faced by employment tribunals and the steps put in place to address these.
Earlier this year, the government recommended that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) bring "competitiveness" back into its regulatory agenda. In a letter to the FCA, the government stated that it wanted the UK to be "globally competitive" while encouraging the FCA to "promote competition" in financial services.
In Nissan v Passi, the High Court recently considered the issue of an employee retaining confidential documents belonging to his former employer in the context of the employer’s application for an injunction seeking the return of such documents from the employee.
Browne Jacobson’s national corporate tech lawyers have advised specialist insurtech business Laka on its $12m series A investment round. The cash injection will allow Laka to expand its operations across Europe and support its new retail partners based in Belgium, France and Germany.
As you probably know by now, the acronym 'ESG' stands for environmental, social and governance. Although the investment community initially coined the term, it has grown into a larger concept that can be applied more broadly to any business or practice.
Browne Jacobson has appointed Graham Ball as the new head of its banking and finance team in Manchester following a period of sustained growth for the firm’s national banking practice.
In this article, Jeremy Irving examines the form and nature of greenwashing as submitted in the June 2021 International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) report.
How greenwashing can be prevented, or how the risk of being accused of ‘greenwashing’ can be forestalled by effective compliance.
The Financial Conduct Authority has highlighted that non-financial misconduct, which of itself constitutes a breach of principles and rules, has the potential to be an indicator or driver of wider conduct risk – behaviour within firms influences the behaviour of those firms towards customers and other third parties.
UK financial services and other firms will be aware of the growing legal and regulatory pressures they face in respect of climate-related financial risk management, especially in the form of current or prospective disclosures, However, regulators are developing a wider set of expectations and standards in respect of environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) factors.
