In today’s rapidly changing financial market, providers of financial services and their investors need a law firm that has a strong history and reputation in the industry, understands its operations and regulatory environment, and helps evaluate the opportunities for operators and investors to respond quickly to the new and complex financial landscape. The attorneys in our Banking & Financial Services Practice Group have that history, experience, and capacity. “Chambers USA – America’s Leading Lawyers for Business” has ranked Jones Walker in the first band for Banking & Finance among firms in Louisiana since 2004. Furthermore, with the addition of Miller, Hamilton, Snider & Odom to Jones Walker in 2008, came a fifth-place ranking by SNL Financial, making the firm among the top law firms in the Southeast in banking merger and acquisition transactions in 2007.

The Banking & Financial Services Group represents major U.S. domestic and multinational banks and financial services companies. In particular, the group represents domestic and foreign commercial banks and bank holding companies, savings associations, investment banks and other financial institutions and their investors in connection with corporate and securities law, boards of directors and special/independent committees on general corporate governance, conflicts of interest, and various regulatory investigations issues before federal and state supervisory agencies, including the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision. The group also handles matters relating to debt and equity financing, including securitization, mergers and acquisitions, mutual-to-stock thrift conversions, bank and thrift charter conversions, industry-specific regulatory compliance, fund formation, bankruptcy, distressed debt and workouts, litigation, employee benefits and taxation.

In addition, the group represents a wide variety of other highly regulated financial service businesses, including onshore and offshore insurance and reinsurance companies and producers, including insurance agents, third-party administrators, managing general agents and brokers, investment companies and investment advisers, pension funds and administrators, and related regulatory bodies.

Jones Walker’s attorneys belong to numerous trade and professional organizations. They are often featured as speakers for professional, trade, and business seminars and are published on a regular basis. In addition, a number of attorneys in the group have held senior positions in various regulatory and supervisory agencies and therefore have intimate knowledge of the banking and financial services industry and of the regulatory regimes to which the industry and its participants and investors are subject:

•  John Blackman has served as a bank director with The Ouachita National Bank in Monroe and, Premier Bancorp, Inc. He served as member of the board of directors (member of the executive committee, chairman of the special projects committee, and chairman of the compensation committee), and remained in those positions until Premier was sold to Banc One in 1996. 
•  Ed Crosland served as a staff attorney in the Division of Corporation Finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission. For two years, he was assigned to the Senate Banking Committee in connection with its review of the U.S. securities.
• Jeffrey Evans worked as Senior Counsel for The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the largest non-governmental regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. In his capacity as Senior Counsel, Mr. Evans brought enforcement actions and litigated disciplinary proceedings against securities broker/dealers and individual registered representatives for violations of federal securities laws and FINRA rules. 
•  Palmer Hamilton served as the Deputy Assistant Comptroller of the Currency, and as Chief of New Bank Chartering in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, from 1974–1976.
• Regina Hamilton served as a corporate trust attorney for Bank One, Louisiana, N.A., where she coordinated legal services for the statewide corporate trust office and managed the central administrative office. Ms. Hamilton also served as Branch Chief, Office of Chief Counsel, where she administered the International Affairs Program for the Division of Investment Management, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C. She was an SEC Senior Staff Attorney on the Special Investment Management Task Force, where she developed regulatory programs for international investment companies and advisers. 
• Arnold Havens served as General Counsel for the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2004–2006.
• Jack Miller served as Assistant to the Director, and then as Deputy to the Chairman, of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, from 1973–1977.
• Gary Pannell served from 1973–1983 as Regional Counsel for the Sixth National Bank Region of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and as District Counsel for the Southeastern District of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, from 1983–2000. He has been a member since 2004 of the Board of Advisors of the North Carolina Banking Institute, and since January 1, 2008, a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.
• Mike Ray was General Counsel to Wachovia Bank, Georgia, from 1990–2002. Prior to holding that position, he served as General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Altus Bank in Mobile, AL from 1986–1990, and previously was Associate General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Citizens & Southern National Bank, now part of Bank of America, in Atlanta.
• Ron Snider served in the regulatory division of the General Counsel’s office of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (predecessor to the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision), from 1973–1975, and as Assistant Secretary of the Board from 1975–1979.

Illustrative services to the banking and financial services industry include:

• Advising banks and bank holding companies on regulatory, compliance and operational matters;
• Representing banks and other financial service firms in corporate finance activities; mergers; acquisitions, including purchases of failed institutions, or assets formerly held by such institutions, from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and purchases and sales of branch offices; asset acquisitions and divestitures, including loan and deposit portfolios, and other tangible and intangible assets, and other organic transactions; and corporate finance activities, including public and private securities offerings and investor relations;
• Representing community banking organizations in a variety of formation, operational, regulatory and transactional activities;
•  Negotiating, drafting and litigating depository agreements of controlled assets (DACA);
•  Establishing de novo banking institutions;
• Advising on bankruptcy and creditors’ rights matters, including advising strategic and financial lenders on acquiring, holding and trading distressed debt—before, during, and after bankruptcy;
• Providing government advisory and relations services and lobbying;
• Advising on investment banking underwriting activities, fairness opinions, engagement letters and regulatory compliance;
• Counseling private equity, venture, distressed debt and hedge fund formation and related Investment Advisory Act and Investment Company Act compliance, direct, secondary and fund of fund investments, expansion financing and exits, as well as intramural contractual arrangements among general partners, limited partners and management;
• Negotiating debt financing/lending;
• Litigating; and
•  Structuring operational and regulatory advice to health, life, property and casualty, title and financial insurance and reinsurance companies, MGAs, brokers and administrators, including establishing de novo insurance institutions.

News

• The National Law Journal Spotlights Jones Walker; Kaynor, Hines Quoted
• Hamilton Joins Financier Worldwide Roundtable Panel for Discussion on Financial Services Outlook

Publications

• Buying Distressed Assets: All Change
  David P. Sofge
  Banking & Financial Services E*Lert, November 13, 2008