Biography: Insurance & Reinsurance

Robert McDowell is partner and co chair of Fasken Martineau's financial institutions group. He specialises in domestic and international corporate, transactional, financing and regulatory advice for life and general insurers, deposit-taking institutions, cooperatives, credit unions and other financial institutions. Robert acts on cross-border M&As, reorganisations, public-private financing of insurers, reinsurers, banks, trust companies, cooperatives, credit unions and fraternals, and demutualisations, including sponsored; the creation, structuring and registration of domestic and foreign insurers, banks, trust companies, credit unions, and cooperatives. He advises on investments and ownership structures, reciprocals, captives, portfolio transfers, reinsurance agreements, securitisations, creation of new products and services, market conduct matters, and financial services networking arrangements. He has extensive expertise dealing with financial institution regulators on all manner of regulatory issues.

His representative experience includes: Foresters' acquisition of New York-based First Investors Consolidated Corp, with assets of approximately US$7 billion; MCAN Mortgage Corporation completes public offering of common shares; Desjardins Credit Union's amalgamation with Meridian Credit Union resulting in a US$8 billion credit union; GMP financing of Westaim's US$264 million acquisition of JEVCO Insurance, Co-operators Life and Central 1 Credit Union's US$245 million acquisition of the CUMIS Group, National Bank Financial's financing of Equitable Group by rate reset preferred shares, ING Canada's rebranding as Intact Insurance and Royal Bank of Scotland in relation to the UK government's majority ownership.

Robert has been active at annual international seminars of the International Insurance Society, the National Insurance Conference of Canada and the Langdon Hall Forum for both the life insurance industry and the property and casualty insurance industry, among others.

Recent honours and awards include listings in: The International Who's Who of Insurance & Reinsurance Lawyers 2011; Who's Who Legal Canada 2011; Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory 2011 as repeatedly recommended (banking & financial institutions – financial institutions regulatory); and he has been recognised by Best Lawyers in Canada 2011 as a leading practitioner in insurance.