England - London • Corporate and commercial
A&O Shearman
A&O Shearman houses a ‘capable and first-class team, who expertly assist clients to navigate through a complex and dynamic regulatory environment and provide practicable and commercially workable solutions’. The practice covers the full gamut of regulatory matters, from market infrastructure, payments regulation, fintech and consumer finance to regulatory change projects and transactional work. A ’market leader’ in derivatives and securities regulation, Damian Carolan jointly leads the team alongside Bob Penn, who acts for banks, asset managers and market infrastructure providers on domestic and cross-border matters. ‘Excellent and engaging’ Ben Regnard-Weinrabe focuses on mandates concerning fintech, payments, cryptoassets, retail banking and consumer finance, while Kate Sumpter has demonstrable experience advising international banks on regulatory-driven structural change projects. Other key contacts in the group include co-head of the firm’s financial markets and markets infrastructure regulatory practice, Nick Bradbury, and fintech regulatory specialist Nikki Johnstone.
Legal 500 Editorial commentary
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
‘Very capable and first-class team, who expertly assist clients to navigate through a complex and dynamic regulatory environment and provide practicable and commercially workable solutions. Added value is a sound and thorough understanding of how the commercial realities of the various individual markets work, how the various parts of the payment's ecosystem work together and what is commercially sensible for us in servicing our clients.’
‘Ben Regnard-Weinrabe is excellent and engaging. Superbly bright, he knows the fintech and payments space inside and out, and truly understands what is important to our business. He has helped us to structure new products and services to ensure regulatory compliance whilst balancing commercial considerations.’
‘A&O is a market leader in the financial regulatory field. It is always on the cutting edge of legal and regulatory change.’
‘Damian Carolan is a market leader.’
‘A&O have advised us on several areas relating to payment service and e-money, relating to outsourcing, safeguarding, wind-down planning, amongst other areas. They are also very strong with horizon scanning and the weekly update emails and offers for quarterly calls are much appreciated.’
‘Ben Regnard-Weinrabe always thinks around the issue and offers useful advice.’
‘A very strong team of non-contentious regulatory lawyers with significant expertise in the relevant market sector.’
‘Nadia Pascal is rapidly becoming a rising star in the team. She shows a level of knowledge and experience which is exceptional.’
Key clients
- UK Finance
- SwapAgent Ltd.
- Tradeweb Europe Ltd.
- XTX Markets Limited
- Virgin Atlantic Airways Group
- A global US headquartered bank
- Refinitiv
- Blackstone
- CPPIB
- Woodbridge
- Nomura International Plc
- LCH Ltd.
- eBay Inc.
- Uber
- Virgin Atlantic Airway Group
- Planet Payment
- Remitly, Inc.
- Mangopay
Work highlights
- Leading on a financial market infrastructure (FMI) risk review project for a global US headquartered bank.
- Advised a bank syndicate comprising BNP Paribas, HSBC and RBC Capital Markets on the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) inaugural issuance of sterling-denominated digital bonds, also marking the first public issuance on HSBC Orion, HSBC’s tokenisation platform.
- Advising a global payments company (a subgroup of a European headquartered multinational financial services company) across a number of its €20bn digital investment initiatives.
Lawyers
Hall of Fame
The lawyers at the very top of the profession, widely known and respected by peers and clients for their longstanding involvement in market-leading work.
Rising stars
Leading individuals
Next Generation Partners
Practice head
The lawyer(s) leading their teams.
Damian Carolan, Bob Penn