Dundas & Wilson CS LLP

The UK financial services industry is, by and large, open for business but is looking at a year or more of difficult trading conditions for its institutions and its customers. After several years of dynamic growth, different challenges are now presenting themselves.

We are a firm which has a very large focus on the sector, with several deep relationships built up over a number of years. We are always striving to ensure that our client teams have a real in-depth knowledge of the market issues facing our financial services clients. This is important at a time when:

• Financial businesses are reworking their operating models to take account of reduced liquidity and capacity in the markets
• their customers are feeling the impact of economic deterioration with low consumer confidence, high commodity prices, a shaky stock and housing market and uncertain medium term economic conditions all creating a mood of retrenchment
• there is increasing regulatory pressure and political scrutiny, whether from the FSA or the BoE, ECB or Fed or through the new Basel 2 rules, which will continue for as long as retail customer confidence in the sector is seen as undermined.

We are very much with our clients in these challenging times, supporting them in re-addressing their business priorities and of course looking out for the many opportunities that now present themselves for those who are able to capitalise on them. Our collective experience has seen troubled financial markets before, as far back as the 1970s, thus giving us the accumulated knowledge of how to survive these conditions and emerge in a healthy, robust position.

Main Contact

Philip Mackay

t: 0131 228 8000