Asset Management Disputes

We're a market leading contentious asset management practice. We act for asset management clients across litigation, arbitration and regulatory enforcement.

We often work internationally. Our team has specialist litigators in over a dozen jurisdictions. And, we cover many more from those locations.

We have deep industry expertise. We work closely with our market-leading asset management and investment funds team. We are trusted by major institutions to manage their most complex matters.

Our clients include most top hedge funds and institutional investment managers, along with private equity funds, private credit, and the asset management arms of financial institutions.

Specialist expertise

We are a team of genuine specialists. Our experience spans many asset classes, from mainstream equity or fixed income to commercial real estate, commodities, infrastructure, and a host of alternative assets and strategies. We regularly advise on distressed asset situations.

Our expertise in asset management litigation includes partnership disputes, negligence claims, bondholder litigation, contested insolvency proceedings, derivative actions, and M&A litigation.

We're used to advising on the pursuit of activist shareholder strategies, and the disputes that can arise in that context. We advise on litigation risk, and on litigation as an asset class.

We act for firms and also senior managers facing regulatory investigation.

Our team has first-hand experience of working with asset managers and regulators. We provide a balanced, informed view about how to manage regulatory investigations and enquiries, whether they're about compliance issues, financial crime, closet tracking, alleged market abuse, or competition law infringement.

Our specialists come from areas including reputation management issues, tax disputes, customer complaint handling, cybersecurity and data breach response.

Contact any of our key contacts below to discuss how we can help you.

Our regulatory enforcement experience

• Market abuse investigations: covering various categories of alleged market manipulation and insider trading.
• Misconduct investigations: into closet tracking, and various other alleged non-financial misconduct.
• Systems investigations: across a range of issues including compliance oversight and regulatory reporting.
• Competition investigations: acting in the first ever FCA enforcement investigation into alleged breaches of competition law, concerning pre-IPO information sharing.
• Financial crime investigations and advice: acting for a range of asset managers on regulatory compliance, sanctions issues, AML, bribery and corruption.

Our litigation and arbitration experience

• Investor litigation: defending claims for redress for alleged negligence, breach of investment mandate, and misrepresentation.
• Partnership disputes: including disputes over control, remuneration, restrictive covenants and portfolio manager exit.
• Fraud: our team has acted in several of the largest fraud-related trials in recent years
  Corporate governance disputes: concerning business decisions, diverted business opportunities, unfair prejudice petitions and derivative actions.
• Corporate insolvency disputes: we acted for over 100 funds across the globe in disputes arising out of the collapse of Lehman Brothers alone.
• International arbitration: we represent clients before tribunals in arbitrations under the rules of all the major international arbitral jurisdictions.
• ESG risk management advice: advising a range of clients on managing their enforcement and litigation risk relating to ESG.
• Business protection: litigation to protect intellectual property, or enforce restrictive covenants in “team move” situations.
• Reputation management: including urgent redress, injunctions, and steps to take down defamatory material posted to the internet.
• Managing conflicts of interest, including around policies and procedures, valuation issues, opportunity allocation, and wider director duties.
• Class action participation advice: on the merits of opting-in, on policies and governance structures, and on related risks
• Due diligence on investment opportunities in litigation portfolios.