Georgiou: intelligent allocation of resources and technology
City law firm Fieldfisher has created an ‘alternative legal solutions’ platform that offers financial services clients “customisable and process-efficient services, all of which go beyond the traditional law firm offering” – and at a lower cost.
The platform, called Condor, aims to combine the firm’s legal and regulatory expertise with the document, data management and technology solutions of third-party service providers.
It is currently focused on the derivatives and securities financing markets, but FieldFisher plans to expand the concept across all of its practice areas.
The brain-child of derivatives partner Luke Whitmore, the initial range of services are made up of:
- A trading documentation unit – operating out of Belfast to negotiate derivatives and other financial markets agreements on a fixed-fee basis;
- Data extraction and analytics – bespoke technology-assisted solutions for legal, regulatory or documentation reviews and issue identification based upon document digitisation, data extraction and data analytics; and
- Large-scale documentation project delivery – delivery of large-scale documentation and documentation remediation projects combining legal and regulatory advice and documentation negotiation with project/process management and technology-assisted “counterparty outreach”.
Chief executive Christopher Georgiou – previously head of the securities and derivatives group at Ashurst – said: “Condor uses an intelligent allocation of resources and technology to deliver highly cost-effective fixed price solutions to our clients.
“Our Variation Margin Managed Service – a comprehensive offering which helps clients implement the new requirement to exchange variation margin for non-centrally cleared derivatives – has garnered a lot of interest. We’ve already secured engagements from global investment banks on this and other regulatory developments.
“Ultimately the Condor platform is designed to make our clients’ lives easier and more cost-effective without compromising on either quality or service.”
Partner Guy Usher, head of Fieldfisher’s derivatives and structured finance group, added: “In these changing times, with endless amounts of regulatory change, clients are looking for ever faster and cheaper solutions.
“Some technology platforms already in the market can capture data from standardised industry documents – but Condor has additional value by also providing legal input. This means that more sophisticated and bespoke data models and analytics can be developed, even for less standardised documents.
“With Brexit, MiFID II, bank ring-fencing and other regulatory changes looming we see a huge demand for this product.”
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