Leading Scots lawyer launches banking scandal brain trust

MBM Commercial partner Cat MacLean, who is one of Scotland’s leading legal authorities on banking misconduct, has launched a new organisation designed to pool profession expertise in order to more successfully fight claims against financial institutions.

Ms MacLean, who has spent a decade leading legal actions against the Royal Bank of Scotland, has now created the Financial Claims Networking Group to “raise awareness of the changing nature of banking claims” and equip accountants and financial advisers with the knowledge the need to identify when legal action against a bank is the correct course of action.

The initiative is being supported by the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking, a cross-party group of backbench MPs that was set up to “prompt solutions to the problems created by bank misconduct towards small and medium sized enterprises”.

Speaking as her new project launched, Ms MacLean, who last year set up MBM Veritas – a joint venture between her firm and Edinburgh financial advisory firm Veritas Treasury – to help former clients of RBS’s scandal-hit Global Restructuring Group, said: “Many people still require specialist legal and accounting advice and accounting preparation to even get their claims to first base.’’