Clifford Chance has a market-leading, dedicated transaction services team of securities and payments lawyers advising on clearing, settlement, custody and cash management services in major financial centres, including London, New York, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan and Hong Kong.
Specialist skills and exceptional experience
We integrate intimate product knowledge with an understanding of risk.
Clients benefit from our extensive experience in handling cross-border and complex regulatory issues.
We routinely handle substantial implementation projects and change programmes and conduct international reviews of legal, regulatory and documentation requirements.
Our outsourcing and competition law specialists work closely alongside the Transaction Services team.
Securities services and clearing
We advise the leading custodians, financial institutions, central counterparties and trade associations on:
- Global and local custody
- Transaction clearing and settlement
- Escrow and paying agent services
- Securities lending, corporate actions, collateral, and risk
- Client money and client assets regimes, compliance and regulation
- Derivatives clearing and CCP interoperability
- European and international regulatory and industry developments, including MiFID, the AIFMD (Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive), Target2-Securities, the Securities Law Directive and European Market Infrastructure legislation
Cash management and payment services
We advise leading market participants on:
- a wide range of cash management products, both domestic and international, including cash pooling and notional pooling, cash sweep and zero-balancing arrangements, on-balance-sheet netting, cheques, direct debit, communications access, cash transfers and structured accounts
- credit, debit and pre-paid cards
- merchant acquiring and interchange fee issues
- mobile payments
- internet banking
- settlement risks, finality, collateral and payment systems
- SWIFT channels, including MACUG and SCORE
- SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area)
- payments legislation, money laundering, sanctions and compliance