Financial Services
Our Financial Services Group is recognized as a premier destination for handling high-level matters for a broad range of clients in the financial services industry. Our clients include U.S. and non-U.S. banking organizations, broker-dealers, asset managers, insurers, retirement service providers and other companies providing financial services, such as fintechs and technology companies, as well as cryptocurrency and other novel payment services providers. Our clients choose us to provide innovative advice on a wide range of transactional, regulatory, supervisory, governance and enforcement matters.
We offer strategic advice that reflects our understanding of financial market innovations and the dynamic regulatory landscape across the financial services sector to effectively pinpoint fast-emerging market opportunities and develop successful capital solutions, all while managing regulatory risk.
Our group combines resources from across practice areas and offices in global financial centers to advise clients on a broad range of issues that are fundamental to the core strategies of their businesses. Our expertise spans across mergers and acquisitions, bank regulation, finance, capital markets, investment management, broker-dealer, commodities, futures and derivatives, economic sanctions and financial crimes, consumer protection, privacy, cybersecurity, tax, corporate governance and litigation.
Paul, Weiss has extensive experience with U.S. and non-U.S. financial services laws and regulations and the agencies that apply them. We represent clients before the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state bank regulatory agencies, as well as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Department of Justice. The firm also works with financial services clients to develop strategies for their interactions with Congressional oversight bodies.
The team consists of former top regulators and senior in-house counsel of major financial institutions that have direct experience in all aspects of financial services regulation, as well as leading strategic and transactional advisors. Our lawyers have played a key role in financial reform and crisis response including the drafting, enactment and implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and advising bank clients and their boards of directors during the bank failures in the spring of 2023.
“The team has provided consistently excellent counsel and work product.”
- Chambers USA
Recent
Experience
Recognition
Law360: Banking Practice Group of the Year
- Ranked Band 2 by Chambers USA in Financial Services Regulation, with five ranked lawyers
- “Structured Finance and Securitization Deal of the Year” by IFLR1000
- Shortlisted for Financial Services Litigation Department of the Year by The American Lawyer
Recent Engagements
- Affiliates of Apollo Global Management in a first-of-its-kind $25 billion private credit, direct lending program with Citigroup, including participation from Mubadala as strategic partner and Apollo’s subsidiary Athene
- Affiliates of Apollo Global Management in its acquisition of a significant portion of the assets of Credit Suisse’s Securitized Products Group, as well as the related launch of securitized credit platform, ATLAS SP, and in the subsequent $8 billion acquisition of senior secured financing facilities from UBS Group
- Apollo Global Management and ATLAS SP in their $5 billion strategic financing and capital markets collaboration with BNP Paribas
- ATLAS SP in the creation of leverage and partnerships through participation and participation-adjacent structures and in the formation of multiple asset-backed warehouse facilities and bespoke securitizations
- Athene Holding in the financing aspects of its acquisition of Wheels, Inc., consisting of a $450 million incremental term loan to the existing facility for Donlen, whereby Wheels will become a subsidiary of Donlen
- Bank of America (BofA) in the successful settlement of a securities class action alleging that BofA and its directors and officers made material misstatements and omissions when seeking shareholder approval for the company’s merger with Merrill Lynch in 2008. The suit was settled for less than 10 cents on the dollar
- Citigroup in major litigation and regulatory enforcement matters, including:
- defense of a consolidated multidistrict litigation alleging that Citigroup and various other banks conspired in a group boycott to reduce competition in interest-rate swap trading, effectively raising prices for purchasers of the swaps; and parallel regulatory investigations
- a complete victory in a multibillion dollar lawsuit brought by the London-based private equity firm Terra Firma. Terra Firma, and its Chairman Guy Hands, claimed they were defrauded in connection with the purchase of the music company EMI in 2007. Terra Firma asserted claims totaling $8 billion, one of the largest claims ever made against Citigroup. Paul, Weiss prepared the case for trial in just 10 months and tried it before a New York jury. The jury deliberated for less than five hours before returning a verdict vindicating Citigroup in all respects
- Goldman Sachs Group in securing a 8-1 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a $13 billion private securities action in which plaintiffs alleged that Goldman Sachs violated securities laws by making a series of generic and aspirational statements, such as “our clients’ interests come first,” which impacted Goldman Sachs’s stock price. The decision may have significant implications for plaintiffs’ ability to achieve class certification in putative securities class actions
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. in
- the litigation and settlement of a securities class action and several opt-out cases brought by investors in The Bear Stearns Companies Inc. who alleged that Bear Stearns’s public disclosures misrepresented the company’s financing, leverage, liquidity, capital, risk management and mortgage business prior to its near-collapse and subsequent acquisition by JPMorgan Chase in 2008
- the favorable resolution of a multi-year investigation conducted by various authorities, including the DOJ and SEC, into whether hiring practices in Asia complied with anti-corruption laws
- MidCap Financial in its agreement with an affiliate of Mubadala Development Company, to create a joint venture platform to invest up to approximately $430 million in portfolios of middle-market loans sourced by MidCap. The Paul, Weiss team also represented the joint venture in connection with a $300 million senior loan facility to finance the acquisition of the loan portfolios together with equity from the joint venture partners
- Mizuho in the structuring of back leveraged facilities to facilitate investments in portfolio company bonds and/or loan issuances
- UBS AG in its settlement with the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, the SEC, the Internal Revenue Service and a group of 25 state attorneys general of investigations into the firm’s former municipal reinvestment and derivatives group
- Various alternative asset managers in numerous multibillion-dollar margin loans for publicly traded portfolio companies, including insurance providers and other financial companies
- Investment funds in the structuring and negotiation of repackaged total return swap financing facilities to obtain secured credit against an existing loan and bond portfolio, including structures involving the formation of multiple bankruptcy-remote special purpose vehicles to borrow, maintain synthetic exposure to the reference portfolio and continue to control voting rights over the loans and bonds
- Formation of dozens of direct lending funds for clients including Apollo Global Management, Avenue Capital Group, Blackstone Credit, Davidson Kempner, HPS Investment Partners, J.P. Morgan Alternative Asset Management, KKR, Oak Hill Advisors and Silver Point Capital, among others
