Financial Institutions

Our team has extensive experience counseling both public and private financial institutions in connection with strategic transactions. With our diverse client base from all over the country, we have the in-depth knowledge necessary to work with both small and large institutions to successfully handle the unique regulatory issues that often arise in transactions. S&P Global Market Intelligence has consistently ranked our firm as one of the top firms in the nation in number of announced bank and thrift merger and acquisition transactions since 2001. In the last decade, we have announced 123 M&A transactions and ranked #1 in the Midwest and #3 in the U.S. for deals announced over that time.

Our group has a number of former federal and state regulators who provide advice regarding supervisory examinations, engagement with regulatory agencies, institutional and individual enforcement actions, and troubled bank situations.

We provide guidance on the full spectrum of lending, deposit, and operational compliance matters, including those involving lending limits, affiliate transactions, anti-money laundering, fair lending, and unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. We also help our clients address the various regulatory considerations and applications that are necessary to initiate new activities, partner with third-parties, engage in expansionary activities, and consummate strategic transactions.

We also advise issuers and marketers of prepaid debit cards, including gift cards, reloadable cards, travel cards, payroll cards, loyalty, incentive, and promotional cards, and represent bank issuers of branded prepaid cards, nonbank issuers or sponsors of closed loop prepaid cards, and marketers of such cards.

We have built a significant securities practice, with unique experience that we believe is second to none in the financial institutions space. We regularly advise on capital raising matters, and in the last decade, we have advised on over 200 public and private securities offerings, including as legal counsel to issuers, investors and to underwriters and placement agents. These offerings included initial and other public offerings by issuers, secondary offerings by shareholders, offerings relating to dividend reinvestment programs and employee benefit plans, and private placements. We have also represented issuers in several of the few financial institution IPOs in the Midwest in the last several years.

FIGx^®, BFKN’s Fintech Group, advises clients at the intersection of banking, technology, and regulation. Combining many decades of experience representing financial institutions with deep knowledge of emerging technologies, our attorneys represent hundreds of banks, payments companies, lenders, cryptocurrency companies, wealth managers, and other financial institutions. Marrying these unique skillsets, we help financial institutions navigate the obstacles to innovation, including starting Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) offerings and other bank-sponsored programs.

Our attorneys routinely deal with our extensive client base on a myriad of corporate projects and corporate governance issues. We have robust experience dealing with boards of directors that are guided by in-house legal teams, as well as clients who do not have in-house counsel. Because of this, we generally will have had substantial experience with most corporate issues that a financial institution, a holding company, or its subsidiaries would encounter. We find that the combined perspectives of our corporate attorneys and our regulatory attorneys are extremely helpful in counseling boards and management as they consider the proper path to follow.

Community, regional, and national banks turn to BFKN when facing high-stakes, complex litigation, and investigations, including class actions and other complex litigation, regulatory and criminal investigations, bank director-officer litigation and bank shareholder disputes, and extraordinary creditor’s rights cases. The firm regularly handles these types of cases and internal investigations for banks located across the country. Recently, we have been retained in cases involving, among other things: M&A transactions, ADA website compliance, overdraft fees and item processing, ATM fees, inter-bank UCC disputes, insurance coverage, and trust services.

The strength of the firm’s financial institutions litigation practice is reflected in the depth and breadth of its experience and in the exceptional results achieved on behalf of our clients. It is also reflected in the fact that we are regularly retained by financial industry leaders (including, for example, the Illinois Bankers Association) to file amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in lawsuits involving issues of particular interest to the financial institutions industry.

We have six attorneys in our financial services practice advising boards of directors, compensation committees, and management teams with respect to the complex, overlapping, statutory and regulatory rules and regulations applicable to the compensation and benefit plans offered by, and employment law issues specific to, public and private financial institutions. We assist clients with the design and implementation of tax-qualified retirement plans, nonqualified deferred compensation plans, equity and other incentive compensation plans. In addition, we regularly assist financial institutions with executive compensation and employment matters arising from supervisory actions and informal review and commentary by federal and state agencies.

Our employment law practice additionally assists our financial institution clients with every aspect of complying with the myriad of ever-changing and developing employment laws. We have extensive experience assisting management with the day-to-day requirements of family and medical leave, disability rights, sex, age and race discrimination matters, and sexual harassment.