Finance Litigation

In any high-stakes financial dispute you want to know that you have legal specialists on your side with decades of experience in the field.

Our award-winning finance litigation practice has acted on some of the most high-profile and complex banking disputes. Featuring leading litigation lawyers with Legal 500 and Chambers recognition, our team deals with many of the largest disputes of the day.
We advise clients on private and retail banking disputes; investment banking and structured finance disputes; trade finance disputes (including letters of credit, performance bonds, guarantees and bills of exchange); recovery strategies; asset finance disputes; sovereign debt; and fraud and asset tracing matters.
We act for, and against, banks, central banks, and other financial institutions; hedge funds, closed end funds, and other funds; corporates, insolvency practitioners; and individuals.

Our highly regarded financial regulatory and sanctions team represents institutions and individuals in a variety of investigations, with a particularly wide experience of advising on FX related investigations and sanctions issues.

We have litigators that can help you solve finance-related disputes in High Court cases and arbitrations, as well as banking litigators in France, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

Services we provide:

Investment disputes
Disputes involving the full range of financial products and structures including swaps and derivatives, securitisations, promissory notes, corporate and government bonds, CDOs and Islamic finance structures
Private and retail banking disputes
Trade finance and commodities disputes including letters of credit, performance bonds, guarantees and bills of exchange
Recovery strategies
Private and retail banking disputes
Sovereign debt
Fraud and asset recovery
Regulation

‘

SH is a deservedly well-respected litigation team, with seriously impressive banking litigation specialists.’

The Legal 500 – Banking Litigation 2025

Clients choose us because we combine deep technical expertise with a collaborative, forward-thinking approach. Our experience in cross-border finance litigation gives clients a clear path forward, whatever the challenge, wherever it arises.

Our Experience

Taiwanese bank
Acting in a Taiwanese bank's defence of a claim brought against it by two UK companies for vicarious liability arising out of a fraudulent misrepresentation, in respect of acts allegedly committed by the bank's former employee in Taiwan.

Non-performing loans
Advising a number of European banks on hundreds of assets recovery and liability proceedings in several jurisdictions arising from multi-billion Euro loan portfolios including the impact of European and national banking and insolvency legislation. This mandate includes acting for credit enquirers including PIMCO, Appollo and Cerberus on legacy portfolios.

Central Bank
Acting for a Central Bank in a series of disputes over foreign reserves including disputes over custody, authority, attempts to seize Central Bank assets, claims under sovereign debt instruments and gold swap agreements.

British Arab Commercial Bank
Advising on a high-profile claim against AHAB, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate, to recover sums loaned to one of its subsidiaries, ATS. This matter was listed as one of The Lawyer's top 20 cases of recent years. The bank's claim was successful at trial.

Investment company
Acting in ongoing proceedings against a number of individuals connected with unpaid loans taken out by a property company with a Cypriot bank prior to the sale of such loans to the investment company as part of a sale of a non-performing loans portfolio.

Complex lending arrangements
Acting for the lender in the recovery of an outstanding loan of £14.5 million arising from a loan agreement from the borrower following the splitting up of a group of companies with complex, global intra group lending arrangements.

Eastern European bank collapse
Acting for the bank’s insolvency administrator on claims against a businessman who is subject to civil and criminal fraud proceedings in various jurisdictions. We have obtained freezing, third-party disclosure and search orders and had 8 separate court hearings, all of which have been successful.

Credit Linked notes
Acting for Credit Agricole in a US$75 million claim by a German bank in connection with the termination amount payable under three credit linked notes (restructured as asset swaps), following the occurrence of a credit event.

Raiffeisen Bank International AG
Acting for RBI in relation to claims arising out of the sale of shares and loans to an Indonesian oligarchical group.

ISDA Termination Dispute
Acting for major European bank in Euro 200m LCIA Arbitration proceedings arising from the termination of a series of transactions under an ISDA Master Agreement including issues arising from US, UK, Jersey and Gibraltar sanctions.