Michael Kent
Financial Regulation Partner, London
“I have 30 years’ experience of advising on corporate and financial regulation issues, and am regularly called upon to offer strategic, practical and commercially focused advice to the heads of companies and financial institutions, on managing their businesses from a regulatory perspective.”
Overview
Professional experience
Education and qualifications
Overview
Michael is a partner in the firm’s financial regulation group.
Michael is renowned as a leading practitioner in financial regulation and is the firm’s lead regulatory partner for many major banking clients and investment management firms.
Michael has extensive experience in advising banks, broker dealers and asset managers on governance, provides training to executive and non-executive directors, and has assisted many banks and large investment firms on their implementation of the Senior Managers and Certification regimes in the UK, their implementation of MiFID II, and on their preparations for Brexit.
He has acted for numerous bank and investment firm consortia, including OTCDeriv (in relation to the development and oversight of the clearing of OTC derivatives and the development of SwapClear) and Plato (in relation to the development of market structure initiatives for equities trading).
Michael also acts as counsel to the FICC Markets Standards Board, an independent private sector initiative established in response to the Fair and Effective Markets Review.
Work highlights
Michael has led on a number of the market’s major developments and leading transactions. A selection of these include:
- PWC: acting as lead regulatory partner on the Lehman Brothers administration.
- Merrill Lynch: acting on its acquisition by Bank of America.
- A client: advising on the establishment of OTCDeriv (a bank owned consortia company) and its joint venture agreement with LCH concerning the development of clearing services for different classes of OTC derivatives.
- Numerous other bank and investment management firm consortia: advising on initiatives, including BrokerTec, SwapsWire, Plato.
- A client: advising on the sale of Quantile, and of AcadiaSoft by its Bank shareholders, to the London Stock Exchange.
- Morgan Stanley and Bank of America: advising on their Brexit planning and implementation.
- Bank of America: advising on its implementation of MiFID II.
Professional experience
Michael is a member of, and legal adviser to, the FICC Market Standards Board (“FMSB”), which defines and sustains good practice standards for wholesale Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) markets and raise standards of behaviour, competence and awareness.
He is also a member of the Bank of England/FCA Lawyers Consultative Group
He is a trustee and member of KXC, an Anglican church in King's Cross.
Education and qualifications
Michael studied law at the University of Liverpool and received a first class degree