Herbert Smith Freehills LLP

Financial Services Regulatory

Consultant

Karen has more than two decades of experience in helping a wide range of financial sector clients to resolve contentious and non-contentious regulatory matters, both in the UK and overseas.

She brings a rounded perspective to her advice, through an in-house secondment in a major banking group as Head of Regulatory, a secondment to the UK financial regulator and a prior role as criminal prosecutor in Australia.

As part of the Financial Services Regulation team which is top-tier ranked in this field by International Financial Law Review, Karen helps banks and brokers with a wide range of regulatory issues, including reponding to reviews, attestations and inquiries, focusing particularly on market abuse, wholesale conduct, conflicts of interest, sponsor duties, investment research, and systems and controls issues.

Karen leads the FSR horizon-scanning team, analysing new law and regulation to ensure that her clients anticipate and remain at the forefront of regulatory law and practice.

Karen is actively engaged in discussions with HM Treasury and UK regulators concerning the development of financial services regulatory policy at a UK and European level. She chairs the City of London Law Society Regulatory Law committee, and works with the industry in various forms, most notably the BBA Market Abuse working group, the Law Society Banking Reform working group and the Wealth Management Association's European Committee.

Karen graduated from the University of Cambridge and joined Herbert Smith Freehills in 2006.

Karen is admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, and was also admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and of the High Court of Australia.