Giulia Del Bianco

Associate

Practice areas

• Financial services and markets regulation
• Investment funds and asset management

Practice notes

As a financial services lawyer, Associate Giulia Del Bianco undertakes a range of work involving investment funds and financial institutions, with a focus on the UK-regulated funds space.

As a financial services lawyer, Giulia advises financial institutions on a wide range of issues and complex matters involving investment funds and financial products.

Giulia regularly works on both UCITS and AIFs and advises on structuring, establishment and authorization of such investment funds. As such, she can advise you on issues arising in the lifecycle of a fund, including variations to existing fund specifications, cross-border UCITS mergers, domestic schemes of arrangement and terminations. She also has experience in large-scale project management, corporate transactions in the financial services sector, regulatory and advisory work, legal drafting, and negotiation.

Whether you are an asset manager, depositary or service provider in the asset management sphere, Giulia can advise you on regulatory changes, ongoing legal obligations and all contracts relevant to investment funds, including depositary agreements.

Her recent experience includes launching a tax-transparent ACS whose sub-funds track custom indices weighted toward companies with stronger ESG scores, assisting a major depositary on a two-year project to transition over £200 billion in custody assets relating to 19 underlying fund managers and acting for a local government pension scheme on the launch of their first passive Paris-Aligned product.

Before becoming a financial services lawyer, Giulia read Law at Newcastle University and subsequently completed the Legal Practice Course at BPP University in London. She trained with Eversheds Sutherland and qualified as a Solicitor in 2020.

As a Trainee Solicitor, Giulia was elected Chair of the Eversheds Sutherland London Junior Networking Committee. She is now leading on a similar networking initiative for junior financial services lawyers. Since her qualification, she has inputted into various government and regulator consultations.

Giulia has acted on a wide range of financial services transactions for leading asset managers, depositaries, pension schemes and other financial institutions. Her recent experience includes:

• advising a major depositary bank on a two-year project to transition over £200 billion in custody assets from a branch of a EU bank to a UK entity — the project involved repapering of over 500 contracts and other documents for 19 underlying fund managers, engaging with the regulator in the UK and ten other jurisdictions, as well as ongoing regulatory advice
• advising a number of clients on the formation of funds with ESG or sustainability objectives, including consideration of the relevant regulatory requirements and disclosure obligations
• structuring and launching a tax-transparent ACS whose sub-funds track custom indices weighted toward companies with stronger ESG scores
• acting for a local government pension scheme on the launch of their first passive Paris- Aligned product, which is expected to grow to over £1 billion in value within the first three years of launch
• advising on the stamp tax-efficient transfer of the UK and Irish equities part of an international portfolio from a life company to an authorized fund in order to restructure the underlying insurance client’s investment holding
• advising asset managers on ongoing compliance with the FCA's Asset Management Market Study and Assessment of Value requirements, including resulting large-scale consolidations of fund ranges through multiple schemes of arrangement
• assisting asset managers as they transitioned their operations away from LIBOR in 2021, including by advising on the appropriate classification for a change in investment objective or policy of an authorized fund resulting from the cessation of LIBOR, assisting with assessments of appropriate replacement benchmarks and liaising with the FCA

Please see below for a link to Giulia's latest publications on behalf of Eversheds Sutherland:

• The FCA's Dear CEO letter to depositaries and custodians Publications - Eversheds Sutherland (eversheds-sutherland.com)
• The use of side pockets by retail funds - Publications - Eversheds Sutherland (eversheds-sutherland.com)
• A new chapter for UK Exchange Traded Funds- Publications - Eversheds Sutherland (eversheds-sutherland.com)

Qualifications and education

• qualified as a Solicitor in England and Wales in September 2020
• trained at Eversheds Sutherland
• completed the Legal Practice Course at BPP University in London
• graduated from Newcastle University with an LLB in Law