The financial services sector is increasingly characterised by complex regulation and sophisticated transactions, all of which require detailed knowledge of both the industry and its regulation.
The Lovells financial institutions group is recognised as a market leader in many of the countries in which it operates. The group advises a number of the leading financial services groups in the world, including insurance and asset management companies, banks and investment funds. The group's clients include Abbey, Aviva, Barclaycard, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Britannic, Co-operative Insurance Society, Egg, Equitable Life, Fleming Family and Partners, GAM, GE Global Consumer Finance, HHG, ING, Invesco, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Liverpool Victoria, Lloyds TSB, Merrill Lynch, National Australia, Prudential, Standard Chartered, Swiss Re, Voca, Wellington and Zurich Financial Services. The group is also well known to financial services sector regulators in the jurisdictions in which it operates. The group comprises over 40 partners and 80 associates based throughout Europe, Asia and the US and is supported by specialists in tax, competition, business restructuring and insolvency and IT with experience of financial institutions.
A key feature of the financial institutions group is the combination of regulatory, product and corporate lawyers in the same group which creates a genuinely industry focused service covering specialist financial services sector matters such as investment funds, insurance finance, consumer finance, outsourcing, product distribution and payment systems as well as mergers and acquisitions in the financial services sector.
Recent comments made by legal directories and other commentators on the financial institutions group include the following:
"an 'epic' presence in the non-contentious insurance market; clients claim that the team is 'detailed in its knowledge, utterly responsive and sympathetic to our needs.'"
Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession
"The undisputed leader for both corporate/regulatory and insolvency work in the insurance sector."
Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession
"The insurance group has risen to pre-eminence and is now embedded in both the regulatory and transactional markets."
Legal 500
"The [Lovells financial services] team, led by Richard Stones, is praised for being 'efficient, practical and helpful.'"
Legal 500
The investment funds practice is recognised as a "broad practice with exceptional strength" by Legal 500 and the Commercial Lawyer FTSE 100 Survey, 2003 listed Lovells as the law firm most popular for financial services sector work.