Financial Services UK

Expert Analysis

• A Look At Protection Options For Board Members In The UK

  

  Most U.K. board members assume that if they do nothing dishonest or recklessly stupid, the organizations they serve will stand by them in the event of threats to their personal liability. This assumption may not be safe, considering the marked increase in regulatory investigations involving both individuals and companies, says Francis Kean of Willis Towers Watson PLC.

• 2nd Circ. Libor Ruling Won’t Slow Cross-Border Enforcement

  

  Many commentators predict the Second Circuit's Allen decision last week will substantially chill the government's cross-border law enforcement efforts, but the truth is that the government won't have to make major changes to its increasingly robust coordination with foreign law enforcement to avoid similar problems in the future, say Jason Linder and John Long of Irell & Manella LLP.

• For Law Firm Offices, Business Savvy Is The New Cool

  

  Having embraced the notion that the right space can reinforce the right firm culture, law firm leaders have been evaluating real estate primarily for its physical properties. However, it's hard to be collegial, even in the coolest of in-house coffee bars, if your cost structure is untenable, says Craig Braham of Advocate Commercial Real Estate Advisors LLC.

• How Midsize Law Firms Can Minimize Cybersecurity Threats

  

  It can be challenging for midsize law firms to develop an enterprise cybersecurity program that mitigates the eminent threat of data breach and meets the regulatory and compliance requirements of the firm and its clients. This challenge becomes daunting when considering the steady rise in client audits, say K. Stefan Chin of Peckar & Abramson PC and John Sweeney of Logicforce.

• Assessing The Path Forward For The Serious Fraud Office

  

  The debate over the possible merger between the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency and Serious Fraud Office has underlined the chronic underfunding of law enforcement. Increasing the budgets of the police and Crown Prosecution Service would be more helpful than an unnecessary merger, says Collingwood Thompson QC of 7 Bedford Row.

• 2nd Circ. Libor Ruling Helps Subjects In Int'l Investigations

  

  The Second Circuit's Allen decision Wednesday tilts the scales toward subjects and targets in multinational investigations. U.S. prosecutors could be forced to get involved in international investigations earlier than they might like, say Gregory O’Connell and Peter Sluka of De Feis O’Connell & Rose PC.

• The BVI's Recent Beneficial-Ownership Efforts

  

  With increasing international focus on matters of beneficial-ownership information, the British Virgin Islands has taken steps aimed at making such information readily available without compromising the privacy of those who, for perfectly legal and acceptable reasons, choose the BVI as the domicile of an entity, say members of Walkers and BDO.

• Corporate Criminal Liability Continues To Expand In The UK

  

  With the recent charges brought against Barclays PLC, the U.K. Serious Fraud Office and Financial Conduct Authority have made clear their intention to expand the law on corporate criminal liability beyond the current identification doctrine and punish those who fail to keep up new legal standards, say Robert Amaee and James McSweeney of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

• Get Ready For The UK's New Unexplained Wealth Order

  

  The U.K. Criminal Finances Act 2017 allows for court orders requiring individuals and companies to explain the origin of assets in the U.K. and beyond that appear disproportionate to their known incomes. But the controversial nature of the new orders means that legal challenges are likely, say attorneys from Dechert LLP.

• Rebuttal

  The Future Of Litigation Finance Is Analytics

  

  In a recent Law360 guest article, Christopher Bogart of Burford Capital LLC claimed that "while theoretically well designed to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, big data and AI currently lack the ability to do so usefully in a commercial litigation financing context." But AI can manage many of the tasks that litigation financiers would otherwise perform, says Eva Shang, co-founder of Legalist Inc.