Financial Markets Crisis Task Force

The members of Alston & Bird’s Financial Markets Task Force have truly unique experience in handling the complex legal issues impacted by the most severe financial markets crisis in decades.  The U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, FDIC, SEC and other Federal agencies have aggressively used nearly every legal authority available, from direct and indirect financial assistance and new guaranty programs to outright government takeovers and a flurry of emergency orders, to resolve problem situations and patch holes in the financial markets.  The global financial landscape is being reshaped at bewildering speed, spawning complex business and legal issues that financial institutions and their management, shareholders and customers will have to address for years to come.  

To assist our clients in staying current in this fast changing environment, we maintain a BLOG that addresses a wide variety of issues and topics.

This environment requires lawyers who can bring to bear a wide range of relevant experience and expertise in representing financial institutions and corporations in such a wide variety of disciplines.  Our team includes:

• Our Legislative and Regulatory teams, including two former Senate majority leaders, former senior officials from the Justice Department, SEC, OTS, CFTC and IRS, among other agencies and policy advisers with decades of experience in such areas as legislative and public policy initiatives and financial services regulations.

• Our Securities, Financial Services, Finance, Bankruptcy and Corporate practices, including attorneys who specialize in finance and derivatives transactions, structured products, securitization, mortgage servicing, commercial and residential real estate, workouts and bankruptcies, and government contracting.

• Our Tax, Benefits and Executive Compensation practices, including attorneys who specialize in the taxation of financial instruments, structured transactions and products, derivatives and hedges, ERISA issues for employee benefit plans, and executive compensation.

• Our Litigation teams, including attorneys focusing on governmental and internal investigations, securities litigation, director and officer litigation, white collar defense and class actions.

During this crisis, our lawyers have helped clients seek legislative and regulatory relief, pursue rights offerings and other emergency capital raising transactions, deal with bank failures and mortgage lender bankruptcies, sell and acquire distressed mortgage portfolios, rescue mutual funds, refinance auction rate securities, analyze exposures to derivatives counterparties and novate derivatives contracts, resolve defaults and potential defaults under securitization structures, recruit (and sever) senior management, litigate 401(k) stock drop cases, defend stockholder litigation, restructure commercial mortgage loans, determine the deductibility of losses on investments, and handle internal and governmental investigations and enforcement actions.