Latham & Watkins was brought in by Legal & General for a review of the company's investment management arm amid concerns over its risk culture, it has emerged.

The US firm was drafted in to conduct an independent review of the FTSE 100 company's funds unit, Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM), following allegations of compliance failures.

According to a report in the Financial Times, the complaints focused on a poor risk culture at the company that could have put client savings and investments under threat.

A spokesperson for LGIM told Legal Week: "We take these issues very seriously, and in the months since these allegations were first made we have been conducting a full investigation using external advisers.

"A recent independent external review of LGIM's culture concluded, overall, that LGIM has a positive, respectful, professional and client-focused culture. We are proud of the business we have built but are never complacent, and as a result deal seriously with any employee issues raised."

Legal & General regularly turns to Slaughter and May for much of its high-profile work, including its acquisition of full ownership of housebuilder CALA Homes this March, and the £650m sale of its mature savings business to Swiss Re last year, while other advisers to the company include Macfarlanes, Pinsent Masons, Clifford Chance and Eversheds Sutherland.

Slaughters was also brought in by TSB to investigate the IT crisis that crippled the bank's operations earlier this year. The bank turned to the magic circle firm to carry out an independent probe of the circumstances surrounding the tech problems, which left large numbers of customers without access to their bank accounts.