Finalists: Cravath, Swaine & Moore (highly commended).

Norton Rose Fulbright landed the investigations team of the year award for helping exonerate its client in a multi-jurisdictional regulatory probe into huge trading losses at a US bank.

The firm represented Spanish banker Javier Martin-Artajo, a senior executive at JPMorgan, who had been caught up in the so-called London Whale trading scandal that had left the bank nursing billions of dollars of losses. As a result, Martin-Artajo faced a slew of criminal and civil proceedings, placing him in the crosshairs of regulators and enforcement agencies such as the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

To test and challenge the allegations against him, Norton Rose Fulbright assembled a cross-border team to sift through and analyse millions of documents in multiple languages, while gathering hours of witness testimony in the UK, US and Europe, to map out an airtight factual matrix that could be submitted before multiple courts and agencies.

That robust and coordinated response bolstered Martin-Artajo's defence and helped illustrate the shortcomings of the case, leading the DOJ and the SEC to dismiss all criminal and civil charges against him (the FCA also took no action).

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