Stephen Elam

Stephen is an experienced commercial litigator, with a particular focus on financial services and banking related disputes, and contentious regulatory matters. He has extensive experience acting for a variety of financial institutions, including hedge funds, brokers and investment managers. Stephen also has significant experience of professional negligence matters, involving professionals in a number of disciplines. He also regularly advises on a broad range of pensions related disputes.

Stephen has expertise in all forms of regulatory investigations and litigation – he regularly advises clients subject to investigation by the FCA. In addition to High Court trial experience, he often works with clients to resolve disputes through mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.

Stephen’s experience working with financial institutions includes both in-house and private practice. Prior to joining CYK, Stephen worked in-house at a global derivatives broker-dealer, where he was responsible for litigation and contentious regulatory matters across the European business. These included, for example, significant disputes in relation to FX, equity and commodity derivatives, both exchange-traded and OTC, and involving counterparties, regulators and exchanges. Stephen particularly enjoys cases involving complex financial instruments and market conduct issues where his product knowledge acquired in-house is valuable.

Background

Stephen qualified as a solicitor in September 2003. He trained and qualified at Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, working there on a variety of commercial litigation and professional negligence matters, before joining the London office of Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in 2008. He moved to MF Global in 2011, and joined Cooke Young and Keidan in March 2014.

Stephen read Law at Magdalen College, Oxford and completed the LPC (also in Oxford) with distinction.

What the legal directories say

Stephen is ranked as a Next Generation Partner by Legal 500 for Banking Litigation and Commercial Litigation (2019 and 2020).

He is a “key name” for contentious financial services and “had a particular focus on matters involving complex financial products” (2020 edition), and is a “key adviser” and “highly regarded” for banking litigation and commercial litigation.

The Legal 500 also describe Stephen as “very bright and utterly charming” (2018 edition) and as a “very safe pair of hands in relation to regulatory enforcement work” (2019 edition).

Professional groups

Stephen is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales and the London Solicitors Litigation Association, Financial Services Lawyers Association, Professional Negligence Lawyers Association and the Association of Regulatory & Disciplinary Lawyers.

Publications, articles and seminars

• Knect 365 Financial Institutions Conference, October 2018 – speaker on FX misconduct and related litigation
• UK/US Cross-Border Litigation Summit, July 2017 – speaker on Specialized Commercial Courts 
• ACCA, May 2016 event: Banking scandals – speaker on claims against banks; risks, tactics and the future. 
• C5, Financial Institutions Regulatory Disputes & Investigations conference, November 2015 – speaker on implications of Property Alliance Group v RBS. 
• International Financial Litigation Network, November 2015 meeting – speaker on benchmark manipulation.