Our Commodities, Futures & Derivatives Group counsels banks, investment banks, hedge funds and all other types of market participant in relation to the structuring, offering and trading of all forms of commodity, future and derivative instrument. We develop new services and products. Matters we advise on include:

• Transactional structuring and documentation, margin, insolvency and other issues
  
  
• Compliance and regulatory issues
  
  
• Establishment of new platforms and trading ventures
  
  
• Advice on new laws and regulations, and legislative lobbying
  
  
• Exchange, clearing and settlement issues; indeed, we advise many of the main financial infrastructure providers offering these services, so are well-acquainted with them
  
  
• New technologies and indices

Commodities and futures

We counsel clients on a variety of regulatory, compliance and transactional issues in the commodities markets worldwide.  In the US we advise in particular on issues arising from the US Commodity Exchange Act, including: advising with respect to the applicability of the Act to OTC derivatives transactions and products and the availability of exemptions; advising exchange-traded futures market participants, such as futures commission merchants, commodity trading advisors and commodity pool operators; and structuring collective investment vehicles such as hedge funds and commodity pools that desire to access the futures market.

Derivatives

We are widely recognized for our sophistication, experience and depth in legal matters involving highly structured derivatives transactions.  We provide a diverse range of clients (consisting of domestic and foreign financial institutions, corporate end-users and hedge funds) with product structuring, documentation and transaction execution assistance on a variety of structured and hybrid instruments, including equity, PIK, fixed income, currency, credit, and commodity-linked instruments.  These products can provide clients with lower funding costs, higher yields, diversification of funding sources, synthetic asset or liability exposure and enhanced asset, liability and credit management capabilities.

The group is at the forefront of the use of these products in innovative situations across a broad range of products and asset classes, including equity, credit, foreign exchange, fixed income, and hedge funds.  The products involve complex regulatory issues and we provide clients with regulatory, risk management, and compliance counseling, particularly with respect to commodities, securities, banking, margin, broker-dealer, gaming and bucket shop laws and, along with attorneys in other firm practice groups, with regard to tax, ERISA, UCC and insolvency issues.  The group is often called upon to give legal opinions on novel structures and on legal and market regulation matters.

Our lawyers have represented numerous banks, dealers, other financial institutions, asset managers and end-users in structuring derivative contracts as an integral component of asset repackaging, monetisation, acquisition finance, M&A and securitisation transactions.