PwC Legal’s Financial Institutions Regulatory Europe (FIRE) Team are trusted advisors to financial services firms and market participants doing business in or from the EU-27. Our FIRE Team is supported by our Frankfurt based European Regulatory Compliance Operations and Regulatory Engagement (EU RegCORE ) Centre, which provides clients with in-depth analysis on the rulemaking and supervisory priorities of EU-level regulatory policymakers and supervisors. Both PwC Legal’s FIRE Team and EU RegCORE are complemented by the further multidisciplinary expertise provided by financial services consultants from PwC’s Advisory and Assurance practices.

The FIRE Team advise new entrants and established brands operating in traditional asset classes and established markets but also FinTech firms, notably those active in the digital and crypto-assets financial services space. We help clients to navigate challenges and seize opportunities throughout the increasingly complex, competitive and rapidly changing regulatory, supervisory and business environment in which they operate.

Our FIRE Team members are multijurisdictionally qualified, multilingual and have an in-depth knowledge of complex legal frameworks and how these interoperate across multiple market sectors in which global as well as EU headquartered financial services firms and their own counterparties and clients operate. We advise on every aspect of banking, securities, asset management, insurance and financial markets regulation as well as on the national and EU legal and regulatory requirements governing capital markets and financing transactions notably with respect to structured finance, securitisation, derivatives and securities financing as well as prime brokerage and custody.

A number of our lawyers have also worked in-house or on secondment with our financial services clients or at regulatory and supervisory authorities. Our lawyers have first-hand experience in both the design of regulatory policy and legislative drafting as well as supporting clients through design and deployment of compliance frameworks as well as the delivery of complex cross-border remediation projects or crisis management response projects as well as responding to regulator-led recovery and resolution exercises.

The strength of PwC’s global network provides our clients access to teams of highly specialised legal and regulatory consulting practitioners present on the ground across the EU-27 and Europe more generally. Our global network provides clients with a unique, all-round legal full-service practice that is essential at a time of tremendous change for the financial services industry. We are in constant dialogue with regulators and supervisors as well as self-regulatory bodies and industry associations to help clients adapt to dynamic global market conditions.

Both our FIRE Team’s and EU RegCORE’s extensive experience of acting for clients in a domestic and cross-border context includes the following specialisms in which we regularly are retained to assist: