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Ulmer & Berne provides a full range of legal services to clients in the financial services industry. Our clients include investment companies, investment advisers, broker-dealers, venture capital and hedge funds, commercial banks, credit card banks, thrift institutions, banking holding companies, credit unions, foreign banking corporations, trust companies, insurance companies, money services businesses, pension plans and consultants, as well as their respective subsidiaries and affiliates, and other industry participants. In addition to its technical expertise, Ulmer & Berne’s Regulatory Compliance practice provides high-quality, pragmatic, prompt and cost-effective legal advice to its financial services clients.
Our interdisciplinary approach to counseling clients combines the knowledge of lawyers familiar with the federal and state securities laws, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Internal Revenue Code, commodities regulation, and federal and state banking and insurance laws. Several of our attorneys have worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), investment management firms, banks, broker-dealers, and insurance companies, enabling us to provide practical insight into handling legal matters for our clients.
In our practice, we:
- Form, register, and represent investment companies, hedge funds, investment advisers and counsel clients on related business matters;
- Assist and advise public companies in making required filings with the SEC and other regulatory agencies;
- Represent clients before regulators, including the SEC, IRS, OCC, OTS, the U.S. Department of Labor, NASD and state regulators;
- Counsel public companies on Sarbanes-Oxley issues;
- Represent clients in private litigation and counsel on litigation avoidance;
- Analyze, and where appropriate, obtain informal or formal guidance from regulatory authorities on a broad range of banking, broker-dealer and investment adviser compliance issues;
- Develop, review, implement and maintain compliance policies, procedures, guidelines and programs for regulated entities, including BSA, privacy, information security and safeguarding, electronic commerce, affiliate transactions and consumer credit regulations (Reg. Z, ECOA, FCRA);
- Counsel clients on de novo formations, sales, acquisitions and mergers of financial institutions, investment advisers and funds;
- Structure entities and transactions to avoid regulation and registration under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Investment Advisers Act of 1940;
- Represent clients with respect to regulatory and investigatory matters including SEC enforcement proceedings, OCC and OTS enforcement proceedings, CFTC enforcement proceedings, proceedings instituted by the securities and banking divisions of states and white-collar criminal proceedings as well as proceedings instituted by the NASD and the various stock exchanges;
- Represent and advises clients on new product development including funds transfers, electronic payments, payment processing systems, Internet sites, debit cards, gift cards and prepaid cards; and
- Assist clients and their affiliates with compliance audits and training before, during and after regulatory examinations.
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