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Ross McCartney

Legal Director, Global Investigations
London, UK

Expertise

Ross has extensive experience in contentious regulatory work, with a particular focus on FCA, PRA and other financial services investigations, including high profile cross border matters. He has over a decade of experience acting for corporates, individuals and the full range of financial institutions and Senior Managers who work for them, extending across global investment banks, wealth managers, insurers, UK retail banks, and international crypto exchanges.

Ross joined AG in November 2025 from an in-house role at a US investment bank, having previously worked in private practice in a silver circle and a magic circle firm. While in-house, working under the Deputy GC for EMEA, Ross covered prudential regulation, regulatory horizon scanning, pension scheme governance and management of SMCR. He has also undertaken past secondments to the UK’s largest retail bank and as a legal advisor to the Chair and Panels of the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the FCA.

Ross has particular expertise advising on investigations concerning non-financial misconduct; market abuse; financial crime systems and controls; the FCA’s conduct of business rules; complaints handling; governance and culture; and consumer redress.

Experience

Selected highlights of Ross’ career experience includes acting for:

an investment bank on an FCA and PRA joint investigation into a trading incident
an investment bank in relation to a criminal trial regarding market abuse
a listed plc on market disclosures and compliance with MAR
a UK retail bank on contagion risk across all financial products related to a Supreme Court judgment
numerous individuals seeking approval as Senior Managers for a range of functions
a trading house in advocacy to a market exchange operator on the impact of Russian sanctions
a crypto exchange on its contested application to the FCA for registration under the MLRs
an English subsidiary of a US headquartered bank on a comprehensive governance review
an investment bank on their global preparedness for the UK failure to prevent fraud offence
an investment bank to help coordinate its internal process to explore its potential exposure to tax evasion and responding to regulatory enquiries across multiple jurisdictions
multiple retail banks on their implementation of the FCA's Consumer Duty rules
a leading insurer in relation to an FCA competition investigation (exercising dawn raid powers)
an investment bank on an FCA investigation regarding MAR compliance
a high net worth individual in relation to share dealing
a listed plc in preparation for an HMRC visit
a financial institution further to a whistleblower’s allegations of non-financial misconduct by a Senior Manager
a UK retail bank further to a whistleblower’s allegation of bribery involving a senior executive
an MLRO as the key witness as part of an FCA investigation into AML failures

Publications

An analysis of the checks and balances when settling matters with the FCA, (with Chris Ninan, 2020), Journal of International Banking & Financial Law
A Practitioner’s Guide to the law and Regulation of Market Abuse (contributing author, Chapter 7, Market Manipulation: misleading statements), Second Edition, 2017

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