Futures & Derivatives and Trading

Our Futures & Derivatives practice represents and advises physical and financial market clients on the full range of legal, compliance, and regulatory issues related to structuring, implementing, offering, and trading all financial instruments, including derivatives, commodities, and other related products (such as repo and securities lending). Resident in our offices in both the United States and the United Kingdom, our practice prides itself on its global reach and cross-border expertise.

Our practice is comprehensive, covering litigation and enforcement, transactional work, and regulatory analysis.

Our team has deep experience both inside and outside law firms, and includes former federal prosecutors and enforcement attorneys, who previously worked in the Securities and Commodities Fraud Section of the United States Attorney’s Office, the CFTC and the SEC, as well as former senior in-house lawyers in the private equity and asset management space. We regularly advise clients in traditional products as well as emerging technologies, including digital assets, voluntary carbon markets, and AI-related products.

Litigation and Enforcement:

Our team, led by partners who are Chambers ranked both in the U.S. and globally for Derivatives Enforcement, effectively respond to and defend regulatory investigations and other proceedings, including concurrent criminal and civil enforcement, and legislative and Congressional investigations. We defend both domestic and international institutions—including futures commission merchants, proprietary trading firms, introducing brokers, advisors, commodity pool operators, banks, designated contract markets, derivatives clearing organizations, swap execution facilities, swap dealers, broker/dealers, investment advisors, and agriculture, energy, and precious metals end-users—as well as individuals in investigations, examinations, enforcement actions, and litigation brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), National Futures Association (NFA), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), U.S. and foreign exchanges, New York Attorney General, and U.S. state regulators. The depth of our experience combined with a deep knowledge of our clients’ businesses and strong relationships with national regulators, self-regulatory bodies, exchanges, and clearing organizations helps to achieve effective and successful outcomes.

Transactional:

Our transactional lawyers advise clients ranging from major banking institutions, asset managers, multinational corporations and commodity dealers to insurance companies, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals, on the structuring, negotiation, and documentation of equity, interest rate, currency, crypto, credit and commodity derivatives, as well as related products. We have extensive experience in synthetic leverage, corporate equity derivatives, physical commodity trading, and the credit markets. Our cross-border team works seamlessly to address the increasingly interconnected international derivatives marketplace.

Regulatory:

Our regulatory practice dovetails with our enforcement and transactional practices, enabling us to take a practical but careful approach to the increasingly regulated derivatives space, both in the U.S. and abroad. Our lawyers have significant experience advocating on behalf of clients with multiple regulators and industry groups and are well positioned to provide practical compliance advice on a range of issues. We are particularly experienced in working private equity clients managing CPO/CTA issues, registration questions, and the complex intersection of securities and commodities regulations.