Magic Circle firms Clifford Chance and Linklaters have been joined by Hogan Lovells and PwC on a new panel created by the new EU authority responsible for winding up banks.
The EU’s Single Resolution Board (SRB) tendered for legal advisers earlier this year, for contracts worth an estimated maximum total value of €15m.
The SRB was established at the start of 2016 with the role of winding up failed Eurozone banks as the key decision making body within the EU’s Single Resolution Mechanism.
According to tender documents seen by Legal Business, the three law firms and PwC’s EU services division will provide advice. The contracts last for two years, with options to renew for up to two 12 month periods.
The documents describe the board as ‘one of the cornerstones of a new architecture in banking supervision and resolution’. It aims to end ‘the toxic cycle of too-big-to-fail’ that led to previous banking crashes.
The SRB serves as the resolution authority within Europe’s banking union to prevent banking failures spilling into a full-blown financial crisis, like those that hastened the collapse of the Greek banking system in 2008 and the Cypriot financial crisis in 2012-13.
The contracted firms will provide advice on areas including corporate law, banking law, capital markets, labour law, real estate and intellectual property.
The SRB’s invitation to tender called for firms to submit CVs of advisers from at least four EU member states and demonstrate significant cross-border experience.
Hogan Lovells Frankfurt-based corporate partner Tim Brandi said: ‘We are proud of our appointment to the legal panel of the Single Resolution Board. We consider this appointment as recognition of our unique bank restructuring experience.’
The SRB was fully operational as of January 2016 as the new regulations on EU banking came into force. It is chaired by the former president of the German financial regulator BaFin, Elke König.
matthew.field@legalease.co.uk
