HIRES from EY and KPMG has allowed law firm Eversheds to launch a new arm to its consulting service and create a nine-strong financial services regulatory compliance team.
Jean-Paul Simoes and Jonathan Steward have joined Eversheds Consulting as directors from EY and KPMG respectively, along with six senior consultants, Accountancy Age‘s sister title Legal Week reports.
They will form a new team headed by financial services regulatory partner David Saunders, former deputy group general counsel at Nationwide Building Society.
The team will work on a broad range of governance, risk and compliance mandates including past business reviews, redress and remediation projects, s166 skilled persons reviews and due diligence.
Eversheds believes it is the first UK firm to launch a combined lawyer and consultant team in a move that followed 18 months of planning.
Under one roof
Paul Worth, head of Eversheds’ financial institutions group, said: “The true differentiator here is that we will have lawyers and consultants under the same roof.
The growth of the financial services regulatory consulting practice has already seen the firm winning work which otherwise would have gone to the big four accountants or risk consultants….Where appropriate it will also enable the client to rely on legal professional privilege, which is something which the accountants and risk consultants cannot provide.”
The launch of the regulatory compliance offering is a response to increased scrutiny by supervisory bodies seeking to clamp down on corporate misconduct.
Range of sectors
The team will target a range of sectors including asset management, retail and wholesale banking, insurance, consumer finance and private equity as it seeks to build on its existing portfolio of financial services regulatory compliance work, which already generates from £15-20m a year for its consulting business.
The firm is also developing a team of compliance-focused contractors in Eversheds Agile, the firm’s flexi-lawyer business – a pool which it hopes to grow to around 100 in the next 12-to-18 months.
Eversheds Consulting was launched in 2010 as a standalone legal consultancy, working with in-house legal teams to advise on how to manage their legal functions more efficiently and effectively. Current Eversheds Consulting clients include Barclays, ITN, Volvo and Du Pont.