Financial Services

Across all areas of our practice, we provide effective legal solutions that draw on our extensive industry and regulatory experience. Our cross-disciplinary team comprises former senior regulators and law-enforcement officials and in-house counsel, as well as lawyers with years of service working directly for the financial sector, advising companies of all shapes and sizes.

Together, we provide comprehensive legal counsel in areas such as:

• Commercial finance and lending
• Derivatives
• Distressed-debt and other alternative investments
• Litigation finance
• Anti-money laundering (AML)
• Economic sanctions
• Financial services litigation and dispute resolution
• Bankruptcy, restructuring and insolvency
• Digital assets

Our team stretches across Crowell’s global office footprint, enabling us to serve clients throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, delivering cost-effective and results-focused counsel to clients in key commercial and financial centers and capitals worldwide.

Collaboration across the board

Our team is practiced at collaborating across disciplines to provide comprehensive solutions to complex problems in the financial services space.  We also draw on Crowell’s deep regulatory bench in other areas across the firm and, when appropriate, our extensive network of non-attorney advisors. Our team is staffed to handle a comprehensive menu of financial services specialty areas, most often advising on:

• Finance and transactions. While serving a unique role in the global economy, financial institutions remain businesses at heart. We provide wide-ranging guidance on structured products, derivatives and secured financings collateralized by receivables and other assets, litigation funders in domestic and cross-border commercial, asset-based lending (ABL), and other specialty lending arrangements, as well as corporate borrowers in secured and unsecured loan arrangements, asset management, commercial finance, contract negotiations, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, and compliance with relevant securities, tax and other regulations.
• Bankruptcy, restructuring and insolvency. We serve as trusted advisors to lenders, investors, borrowers, secured and unsecured creditors, receivers, bankruptcy trustees, directors, fiduciaries and other stakeholders. We help clients identify and mitigate risks, maximize recoveries, and navigate complex claims, purchases, sales, and other matters in and out of court.
• Regulatory compliance and enforcement. We provide both day-to-day counseling and extensive assistance in sensitive, high-stakes internal investigations and civil and criminal enforcement responses across a broad range of federal and state law matters, AML, economic sanctions, anti-bribery/anti-corruption, securities trading, LIBOR, foreign exchange, and whistleblower allegations. Our team includes the former chief counsel at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), multiple veterans of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), as well as multiple former federal and state prosecutors with in-depth experience in federal, state and international laws and regulations.
• Litigation and dispute resolution. Assets flow at lightning speed across platforms and jurisdictions. Our seasoned litigators handle domestic and cross-border disputes worldwide, having identified, protected, recovered and repatriated billions of dollars in assets through freezing injunctions, disclosure orders, tracing remedies, and litigation before local and federal courts and international arbitral bodies.
• Blockchain and financial services technology (FinTech). New technologies have created exciting opportunities for financial services institutions — and given rise to a host of securities, AML, privacy, data-security, and other concerns and questions. We counsel clients on the transactional and regulatory issues that established and emerging companies face including developers and users of digital assets, distributed ledger technology (DLT) and other decentralized, asset-related platforms.  Our clients include digital asset exchanges, custodians, developers of decentralized finance protocols, non-fungible token (“NFT”) businesses, and major investment banks and funds seeking to invest in these technologies.