Banking and Financial Legal Services

Hinman, Howard & Kattell represents companies operating in every sector of the rapidly changing financial services industry. The firm’s clients include commercial banks, credit unions, thrift institutions and their holding companies, mortgage bankers and brokers, check cashers and money transmitters, insurers and insurance producers, investment banks and broker-dealers. Our clients range in size from local and community banks and thrifts to regional and national commercial banks and insurers.

HH&K’s lawyers advise depository institution, insurer and securities clients on a wide variety of regulatory and transactional matters, including mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, holding company formation and restructurings; mutual to stock conversions and mutual holding company reorganizations; licensing; regulatory compliance, enforcement and governance issues; charter conversions; investments and activities; new product development; directors’ fiduciary responsibilities; branching; interstate banking; insider transactions; capital compliance; and lending and finance documentation.

Our clients benefit from our continuous work with bank regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the National Credit Union Administration, the New York Department of Financial Services and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HH&K has handled complex and innovative projects in financial services law and regulation, such as:

  • Acting as issuer’s and underwriter’s counsel in thrift mutual to stock conversions and reorganizations;
  • Handling charter conversions for state and federally chartered banks and thrifts;
  • Representing a financial services trade organization as amicus curiae in the successful challenge to a state law impeding the insurance operations of national and state banks;
  • Representing bank holding companies in the issuance and purchase of trust preferred securities;
  • Securing preemption rulings on behalf of federally chartered institutions;
  • Chartering of de novo institutions;
  • Obtaining regulatory approval for reverse annuity mortgages, sweep accounts and other products and services;
  • Representing banks as purchasers of financial services businesses, including insurance agencies, mortgage brokers and check cashers;
  • Drafting and negotiating state and federal financial services legislation and regulation regarding mutual holding companies, insurance parity powers for state banks, omnibus life and health insurance law revisions, mortgage servicing, bank holding company activities, and banking and insurance law deregulation; and
  • Advising and representing financial institutions as both buyers and sellers in business combinations and asset purchases.

ATTORNEYS