Linklaters LLP

Financial regulation

Sarah advises on all aspects of financial markets regulation, acting for investment banks, asset managers, wealth managers, retail banks, custodians and proprietary trading firms. She has a particular focus on regulatory issues arising in the private wealth management and retail sectors having spent some time on secondment to a major retail bank in 2010. She has also advised extensively on client money and AML issues as well as on senior manager culture and governance.

She regularly advises her clients in relation to regulatory investigations and enforcement matters and has extensive experience in supporting transactions in the financial services sector.

Sarah has helped a number of clients manage their cross border regulatory risk, often obtaining advice across multiple jurisdictions to identify licensing and conduct risks, then guiding her clients to reach the best pragmatic solution to manage those risks. She is currently advising clients on the impact of Brexit to their business model.

She particularly enjoys leading large-scale regulatory change projects, tracking developing legislation from the policy stage, through to draft legislation, client impact assessment and project planning, implementation and business as usual.

Sarah was based in the Linklaters’ New York office during 1993 and 1994, where, among other mandates, she worked on a number of debt and equity capital markets transactions for banks and corporates based in South America. In 2010 Sarah undertook a four month secondment to the retail legal team of a major high street bank.

She is regularly called upon to provide training and present on regulatory developments to her clients and in 2014 featured in Financial Times Timewise UK’s 50 most powerful part-timers.

Work highlights:Sarah enjoys a wide variety of regulatory work, reflecting the diversity of her client base.  She includes among recent highlights:

Implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Manager Directive for a major asset manager, involving the restructuring of their fund management business, the establishment of a SuperManco and the migration of over 20 funds to the new platform Undertaking an extensive multi-jurisdictional licensing and conduct review involving obtaining and digesting detailed advice from over 100 jurisdictions across a wide range of financial services and products to support a client’s cross border risk management programme Supporting a number of clients through regulatory investigations and S166 Skilled Persons reviews on a range of topics including suitability of advice, client money issues, AML compliance and regulatory compliance of product disclosure materials Implementation of the Senior Manager and Certification Regime for a number of clients Acting on implementation of Ring-fencing legislation for a major high street bank Advising a range of clients from both the Sell-side and Buy-side on the impact and implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II)

 

Articled clerk Field Fisher Waterhouse 1987-89; solicitor Linklaters 1990-95; vice president Legal JPMorgan Investment Management 1995-97; solicitor/counsel Linklaters 2004-10, partner 2010 to date.

University of Durham, St Mary’s College (1985 BA (Hons) Music); College of Law (1987 CPE and PLC (First Class Hons)); Cardiff University (2006 LLM).