A leading corporate lawyer in the UK has reassured investment banks that they are unlikely to suffer the litigation that banks in the US are facing over allocations at initial public offerings.
John Bennett, head of the corporate department at Berwin Leighton Paisner, the international law firm, said agreements between the underwriters of an equity issue and investors buying the shares would be treated as private agreements and so would not be open to scrutiny from regulators. "In the UK, that would be treated as a contractual matter," he said.
