Practices

Financial Services Regulation

Our expertise:

Our Financial Services Regulatory Group combines excellent legal expertise with an immense depth of experience in all aspects of financial services regulation, including authorisations, EEA passporting, supervisory engagement with the Central Bank of Ireland and other regulatory authorities, conduct of business requirements, compliance projects and regulatory enforcement actions. We work on many of the most innovative transactions in the Irish market and advise on the most complex regulatory issues. Amongst other matters, we provide advice on regulatory capital treatment of structured products and debt instruments, provision of retail and wholesale financial services over the internet, insider dealing and market abuse issues, consumer credit matters and anti-money laundering issues. Our London, New York and Brussels offices provide support on regulatory transactions and projects with an international aspect.

Our clients include retail and wholesale banks, payment institutions, electronic money institutions, retail credit firms, credit servicing firms, insurers and reinsurers, investment firms, FinTech companies, investment managers and funds, brokers, dealers and other intermediaries. We have advised many international banks and other financial institutions on establishing operations (including branches and regulated subsidiaries) in Ireland. We also advise clearing houses, exchanges and other market participants on derivatives-related clearing, settlement and custody issues. The practice has been busy with Brexit-related mandates over the past number of years.

Key areas

Our work in this area includes advising:

• Authorisation of financial services businesses and other licensing issues
• Capital structures, regulatory capital and reserve requirements
• Corporate governance and internal control requirements 
• Remuneration regulation
• Conduct of business advisory compliance
• Compliance assurance reviews
• Fitness and probity and corporate governance requirements
• Change of control and acquiring transaction notifications
• Purchase and sale of loan portfolios and other financial assets, due diligence exercises
• Regulatory investigations, including the administrative sanctions process
• Regulatory reporting obligations to the Central Bank of Ireland
• Distribution arrangements for financial products and services
• Financial e-commerce, payment and mobile banking services
• The structuring and distribution of new and innovative products
• Financial services compliance support  
• FinTech