Insurance is one of the most complex, heavily regulated and litigation-intensive industries in the world. The industry’s extensive and ever-changing regulation requires sophisticated legal advice on contentious and non-contentious matters. With extensive experience in the industry, we are the ideal partner for our clients, helping them navigate myriad industry-specific legal issues, big and small. For decades, we’ve been the counsel of choice for leading insurance and reinsurance companies in a wide range of litigation, regulatory and transactional matters.
Our Practice
An international leader in insurance litigation and arbitration, Paul, Weiss has represented some of the biggest names in insurance—ACE, AIG, AXA Equitable, Chartis, Chubb, Cigna, The Guardian, ING and Swiss Re, among others—in a wide variety of matters, including many of industry-wide significance. Whether addressing recurrent high-impact coverage issues, sensitive investigations, regulatory enforcement, sales and distribution, policy changes, statutory accounting and actuarial issues, reinsurance and other risk transfer mechanisms, or securities fraud allegations, our litigation team brings both deep industry knowledge and peerless trial skills to bear on our insurance clients’ challenges.
Our corporate practice has decades of experience working with prominent insurance industry participants on a range of transactions. Our clients include leading companies throughout the industry, including Swiss Re and Chubb. Our thorough knowledge of the forces that shape the industry enables us quickly and effectively to identify, address and resolve our clients’ challenges and needs, whether in connection with a potential corporate or financing transaction or otherwise.
Our Insurance Group has handled landmark and precedent-setting disputes arising from our property-casualty and life insurer clients’ core business, including insurance and reinsurance coverage issues relating to such matters as 9/11 property damage and business interruption claims, asbestos, Superstorm Sandy claims, stranger-originated life insurance and life settlements, statutory disclosure obligations, captive insurance and reinsurance, follow-the-allocations and political risk insurance, among many others.
Our lawyers also regularly represent insurance companies in a variety of other matters, including securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, disputes arising from mergers and acquisitions, cybercrime and data breaches and derivative actions. As appropriate, our litigators work closely with our leading M&A, finance, capital markets and tax partners, who are equally experienced in representing insurance industry clients.
In addition to litigation, we represent insurance clients in high-stakes regulatory matters. Over the past decade, no law firm has been more deeply involved in the regulatory and investigative challenges affecting the broader financial services industry, including representing a who’s who of major financial institutions through the highest-profile investigations regarding anti-money laundering, economic sanctions, benchmarks, bribery, consumer protection and financial crisis-related proceedings brought by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve Banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, State Attorneys General throughout the U.S., FinCEN and other regulators.
Our transactional practice features experienced securities and capital markets, financing and M&A lawyers with deep knowledge of the insurance and reinsurance industry. As advisers to issuers, we have been involved in structuring novel capital markets instruments and other solutions to meet capital and liquidity requirements. As advisers to both acquirers and sellers in mergers, asset acquisitions and divestitures, minority investments and other transactions, we offer sound counsel regarding all aspects of a transaction, including taxation and financing matters. With experience in both domestic and international transactions, and supported by the firm’s leading bankruptcy and restructuring and other practices, our team provides comprehensive, expert guidance to advance our clients’ strategic goals.