Alexandria Carr is a qualified barrister practising in London as Of Counsel with the Financial Services, Regulatory & Enforcement group. She has worked for the UK government for 13 years, the last 5 of which she has spent at the UK’s ministry of finance, HM Treasury, working closely with people across government, the FSA, the Bank of England, ministries of finance across Europe and the institutions of the EU.
Alexandria has acted as the lead legal adviser on EU financial services strategy with a specific focus on the new EU financial services supervisory architecture. She has been the lawyer on the UK team that negotiated the European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS) (that established the new European Supervisory Authorities) and implemented the ESFS in the UK. Since the establishment of the ESFS in January 2011, she has advised HM Treasury on the changes it has made to the regulation and supervision of financial services.
She has also advised HM Treasury on the EU’s response to the financial crisis more generally as the EU seeks to reduce the discretion of individual Member States to legislate domestically and to develop a single EU rulebook for financial services. In addition, Alexandria was the lawyer on the UK teams negotiating Solvency II, the short selling regulation and the proposed market abuse regulation currently being negotiated. She also has advised HM Treasury on the new system for making subordinate EU financial services legislation (what is known as “level 2”) post the Lisbon Treaty. Alexandria also has experience of regulation on a purely domestic level, having, for example, drafted the legislation which regulated Islamic finance and created a protected cell regime for Open Ended Investment Companies.