Elizabeth Dowd

Liz is an experienced and skilled contentious regulatory practitioner in the Financial Regulation Group with a focus on regulatory enforcement investigations for both firms and individuals, contested supervisory interventions, internal investigations, and risk and compliance reviews. She principally advises financial institutions, including global investment banks, retail and challenger banks, payments and e-money institutions, and asset managers.

Liz advises on a wide-range of subject matter areas of critical importance to clients and areas of intense regulatory focus, including governance and oversight arrangements, risk management, AML and financial crime, Senior Managers and Certification Regime, and individual accountability issues.

Liz brings insight from her time on secondment as a senior investigator in the PRA/Bank of England's Enforcement and Litigation Department and has extensive PRA and BoE enforcement experience putting her at the forefront of practitioners in this area of contentious regulation. Liz has represented individual senior managers in FCA, PRA and Bank of England enforcement investigations.

Liz has been with the firm since graduating law school in the United States, and before moving to the firm’s London office in 2013, she worked as a dispute resolution lawyer in the firm’s New York office for five years with focus on multi-jurisdictional civil litigation. She also spent time the UK regulatory advisory team at a global investment bank.

Liz is passionate about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and active in the firm’s Legal Pro Bono and Community Investment programmes.

Work highlights

Liz has advised on high-profile contentious regulatory and risk advisory matters, including:

• representing a global financial institution in complex cross-border and dual-track criminal and regulatory investigation into anti-money laundering/financial crime systems and controls and reputational risk management
• advising several fast-growing challenger banks on investigations and supervisory interventions related to financial crime and sanctions systems and controls, governance and risk management, and culture issues
• successfully challenging proposed authorisations refusals through the FCA’s new executive procedures and advising firms on proposed variations of permissions and voluntary requirements
• representing firms and individuals in investigations related to operational resilience and cybersecurity issues
• conducting internal whistle blower investigations and advising clients on individual accountability reviews
• conducting a large-scale governance and compliance review for an investment management firm and advising on its subsequent remediation programme and regulatory engagement
• representing a Japanese-headquartered bank as part of a large multijurisdictional investigation and related remediation work related to the development of group-wide policies, procedures, and controls related to information sharing and compliance with UK and other regulatory rules affecting the firm’s global network
• advising a large investment bank in relation to LIBOR, EURIBOR and other benchmark fixing investigations
• advising a major UK retail bank in a regulatory investigation into its PPI complaints handling operation and advising on its individual accountability review

Liz has been a trustee on the board of the St. Paul's Arts Trust for four years, a role she obtained through the Linklaters-sponsored charity BoardMatch programme run in conjunction with the East London Business Alliance. The Trust supports the Space Theatre, which is a performing arts centre based in a converted church in East London.

Liz studied international politics at Georgetown University before graduating from The George Washington University Law School.

Liz is admitted to the Bar of Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the State of New York.