• Solicitor, qualified in England & Wales

Experience

• Advising clients on perimeter issues, compliance with FCA Rules and the application of a wide range of European financial services legislation.
• Advising clients on various conduct of business and governance arrangements.
• Assisting clients with regulatory filings, including change of control, waivers, pre-issuance notifications, authorisation applications and variation of permission applications, to the FCA and international regulators.
• Advising clients on their interaction with regulatory authorities, including assisting clients in responding to regulatory queries, requests for information and their regulatory reporting.
• Advising clients on the application of the FCA's Client Assets Sourcebook, including in relation to title transfer collateral arrangements, primary and secondary pooling events, segregation of client money, client mandates, outsourcing and delegation, and resolution packs.

  Markets and Market Infrastructure

• Advising a large institutional broker on its MiFID II project and assisting with its variation of permission and systematic internaliser notifications to the FCA.
• Advising a market-leading retail broker on its MiFID II project, including in relation to best execution, client disclosures and reporting, inducements and conflicts of interest, the systematic internaliser regime, changes to the client money and client assets framework, transaction reporting and transparency, governance, and third country provisions.
• Advising a number of institutional brokers on the FCA's payment for order flow rules.
• Advising a consortium of institutional brokers on the application of the systematic internaliser regime.
• Advising a market-leading broker on the establishment of a multilateral trading facility.
• Advising a number of brokers on client money and custody matters, including the drafting of title transfer collateral arrangements, cross-netting arrangements, custody agreements
• Assisting a retail CFD and spread betting broker on amendments to its terms of business and customer documentation.
• Advising a global market maker on the application of MiFID II, particularly in relation to third country issues, direct electronic access and high frequency algorithmic trading.
• Advising an international bank on amendments to its customer documentation in light of MiFID II.
• Advising a number of brokers on the application and scope of the direct electronic access provisions under MiFID II.
• Advising a consortium of institutional brokers on the procedure to become organised trading facilities under MiFID II.
• Advising a global private equity firm on its wall crossing and information barrier procedures under the Market Abuse Regulation.
• Advising an institutional broker on its transaction monitoring and suspicious transaction reporting framework.
• Advising an institutional broker on its variation of permission application to become a systematic internaliser.

  FinTech and Payments

• Advising the Web 3.0 Technologies Foundation on its $150 million initial coin offering to fund the development of the Polkadot protocol.
• Advising Northern Trust on its commercial partnership with IBM to deploy the first blockchain use case in the private equity industry.
• Advising the Post-Trade Distributed Ledger group on legal and regulatory matters.
• Advising a leading supplier of market data and technology to the investment banking industry on regulatory matters.
• Advising MUFG Bank, Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Coventry Building Society, ABN Amro, Royal Bank of Canada, Northern Trust Corporation, and Nordea on their respective PSD 2 implementation, including in relation to strong customer authentication, and contractual re-papering projects.
• Advising Revolut, a leading payments and digital banking startup, on regulatory matters, including payment service and electronic money matters.
• Advising a leading national transport provider on its contractual arrangements with its payment service providers to facilitate point of sale and card-not-present payment transactions across its network.
• Advising Glint Pay on the development and deployment of a gold-backed payment instrument for transactions at point of sale.
• Advising cryptocurrency exchange and wallet provider Luno on the application of card scheme rules.
• Advising Emergent Technology on the launch of its G-Coin product offering, a digital payment instrument backed by gold which can be transferred, exchanged for fiat currencies and used to make point-of-sale payments.
• Advising a retail broker on the regulatory status of derivatives with virtual currencies as the underlying.
• Advising Lendingblock, a cryptocurrency lending platform, on the launch of its cryptoasset lending platform.
• Advising Starling Bank, a digital banking provider, on regulatory and corporate matters.

   

  Transactions

• Advising Virtu Financial on its $1.4 billion acquisition of Knight Capital.
• Advising Virtu Financial on its $1 billion acquisition of Investment Technology Group.
• Advising KKR on its AUS$660 million acquisition of ASX_listed lender Pepper Group.
• Advising KKR on the strategic combination between KKR Prisma and PAAMCO.
• Advising KKR in relation to its acquisition of a minority stake in Focus Financial Partners and in relation to Focus' subsequent IPO.
• Advising KKR in relation to various transactions conducted by its portfolio companies.
• Advising KKR on its global reorganisation and conversion of its NYSE-listed partnership vehicle to a corporation.
• Advising KKR on its majority investment in car finance platform Oodle.
• Advising KKR on its majority investment into Pillarstone, a non-performing loan platform.
• Advising KKR on the sale of its majority stake in South Staffordshire plc.
• Advising KKR on its acquisition of Webhelp SAS.
• Advising Bain Capital on its £1.2 billion acquisition of insurer esure Group plc.
• Advising Advent International and Bain Capital in relation to regulatory filings connected to the sell down of their stakes in Worldpay Plc.

   

• Advising Barclays on the sale of a £2.2 billion stake in its African business.
• Advising Saxo Bank, Sampo plc and Geely Holding Group on the EUR 1 billion acquisition of a majority interest in Saxo Bank A/S

   

• Advising AnaCap Financial Partners in relation to various transactions.
• Advising Technology Crossover Ventures in relation to its acquisition of Retail Merchant Services.
• Advising the New Payment System Operator on the merger of the Bacs, Faster Payments and Cheque and Credit Clearing Company payment schemes.

  Asset Management

• Advising a UK investment manager on its MiFID II implementation project.
• Advising a Canadian infrastructure fund on marketing and reporting requirements under the AIFMD across the EU.
• Advising a UK investment firm on its variation of permission to become an AIFM, including drafting its underlying policies as required by the AIFMD and FUND.
• Advising a UK manager of an LSE-listed REIT on regulatory matters.
• Advising a UK investment manager on AIFMD matters.
• Advising a US UCITS management company on the provisions of the UCITS and AIFMD remuneration rules.
• Advising a US private equity firm on marketing and reporting under the AIFMD.