Reed Smith Richards Butler is in the final stages of preparing for a claim against JP Morgan Chase Bank in what looks likely to be one of its final cases against a bank.
The
Richards Butler is advising Springwell Navigation on the claim, which relates to advice given by the bank in the 1980s and 1990s.
The high-profile case, which comes to trial this April, has been ongoing since 2001 and has seen the involvement of counsel from many top sets.
However, Reed Smith has indicated that the legacy
Richards Butler had previously made much of being one of the few top 50 firms willing to act against banks.
Before the merger, its banking litigation website claimed: “The group’s independence in acting both for and against the financial institutions and for and against the regulators, sets it apart from other major law firms.”
The firm has advised on a number of cases including acting for HSH Nordbank against Barclays Bank in 2004 and advising the Co-operative Group on its pension fund claim against Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.
A senior partner in the merged firm told Legal Week: “Richards Butler is now part of something much bigger, with a wide array of banking clients. We have to think of the firm as a whole now, and that is what we will be doing going forward.”
