Our financial institutions lawyers provide regulatory advice for friendly and contested transactions, public acquisitions and divestitures, private equity transactions and joint ventures when the acquirer, target or partner is a U.S. or international financial institution.

We bring practical experience to the integration of broker-dealer businesses, having been involved directly in a number of broker-dealer mergers as in-house counsel and corporate executives. Our IP lawyers advise broker-dealers and trading markets on intellectual property issues arising in connection with acquisitions, licensing and other transactions.

• Chambers USA 2010 ranked Davis Polk in the 1^st tier for Financial Institutions M&A.
  
  
  
• Chambers USA 2009 noted that “[p]laying a central role in work relating to the economic downturn, Davis Polk has emerged as one of the market leaders in the . . . M&A field.”
  
  
  
• According to Chambers USA (2008), “The financial institutions group at this New York leviathan offers considerable strength in both financial regulation and compliance and financial institutions M&A … Clients highlight the team’s ability to understand both market issues and their intersection and regulations.”

• We advised Citigroup in connection with all of its major financial crisis-related matters, including its joint venture with Morgan Stanley, which created Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the largest U.S. retail broker.
• We are advising the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Department of the Treasury on a series of more than $180 billion in unprecedented securities and loan transactions for AIG, the world’s largest insurer.
• We advised ABN AMRO Holding on competing acquisition bids by Barclays and a consortium of leading European banks and ultimately on its $101 billion acquisition by the Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium. The transaction is the largest-ever in the banking industry and created one of the world’s top five banks.
• We advised Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI on the U.S. aspects of their merger. Sanpaolo IMI, headquartered in Turin and Rome, Italy, and Banca Intesa, headquartered in Milan, Italy, are two of the premier banking and financial groups in Italy.