A new banking and financial environment has emerged as a result of the financial crisis. Presenting a clear challenge to players in the financial arena, a need has arisen to assimilate and anticipate the changes that are emerging, changes which involve new and more complex rules and renewed practices. The ambition of the Banking and Finance team of CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre is to provide operators in the banking and finance sectors with the services of lawyers specializing in legal and tax matters, with the aim of contributing to their expansion in this new context.

Our Practice Areas

Our team covers the entire spectrum of banking and insurance transactions and regulations:

•  Banking, investment services and insurance law
•  Intermediary financing relating banking, finance and insurance
•  Banking finance, treasury services
•  Guarantees
•  Securitisation
•  Financial products, particularly life insurance, general insurance, health insurance, reinsurance, over-the-counter and exchange traded products
•  Collective investment schemes (standard, alternative and private equity)
•  Stock exchange transactions
•  Acquisition, project and asset finance
•  Structured finance
•  Debt restructuring and rescheduling
•  Banking and finance litigation (civil, criminal and disciplinary)

Our Approach 

• Ability to deal with complex matters: our team is able to work on innovative and transnational transactions with our partners in the CMS network as necessary.
• Synergy of expertise: we are able to call on the skills of other experts in the firm, in particular tax lawyers, to ensure that the matters we are entrusted with are conducted in the best possible way, and that every transaction is covered in all its aspects. The firm’s excellence in tax matters enables us, for example, to offer innovative optimised structures in this field.
• Innovative customised solutions: attentive to the needs of our clients, we are able to respond rapidly and anticipate future needs. Our knowledge of financial market practices enables us to offer our clients market practice solutions although we attach particular importance to ensuring that, for each situation or transaction, the solutions that we propose and the documentation that is drawn up correspond effectively to the real needs of our clients.
• Monitoring of transactions: we are well placed to respond to the requirements of our clients in terms of both new transactions and monitoring or unwinding of current transactions

Our Clients

The Banking & Finance team serves the needs of a wide variety of clients in France and abroad: retail banks, investment banks, investment service providers, institutional investors, insurance companies, industrial and commercial companies and local, national or supranational public authorities. The team acts for its clients in relation to the setting up of the legal and tax structure of transactions, preparation and negotiation of legal documentation, and advising in the context of own account transactions. With the support of the CMS network, the Banking & Finance team takes a fully integrated approach to international transactions in Europe (France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Spain, Hungary, Serbia Montenegro, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Ukraine), South America (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay), Africa (Morocco) and Asia (China).