Douglas is a partner in Reed Smith’s Global Commercial Disputes Group and member of the Global Financial Regulatory Group. He has extensive experience in leading financial services and markets investigations, in particular in responding to Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority enforcement matters as well as other regulatory processes, including providing and responding to skilled-persons’ reports and advising on regulated market investigations and Financial Reporting Council proceedings.
Douglas’ approach is informed by his previous experience working at the former Financial Services Authority in the Supervision and Enforcement and Financial Crime Divisions there. This experience provides an invaluable insight to the regulatory mindset and assists in formulating strategic and tactical approaches to regulatory issues.
Douglas provides his expertise to a wide range of financial institutions including banks, investment managers, fund managers, broker-dealers, consumer-credit firms, electronic money issuers, and payment service providers. These clients often have a global reach and Douglas’ has significant experience of conducting matters touching several jurisdictions and involving multiple investigators and regulators across the globe.
Douglas’ practice also leverages his experience in providing specialist non-contentious regulatory counsel to his clients, with particular experience in dealing with conduct of business issues, organisational and governance arrangements, systems and control concerns, regulatory notification requirements, the approved persons, senior manager and certification regimes relating to individuals within regulated firms as well as various other supervisory interactions between firms and their regulators.