FinTech

Our fintech team delivers legal and commercial advice for a wide range of businesses from fast-growing start-ups to some of the world’s largest companies.

Our team has been immersed in the fintech ecosystem since 2014 – a lifetime by the standards of this rapidly-evolving sector. We have extensive knowledge of the sector and an established network allowing us to support our clients beyond the realms of traditional legal advice.

We help our clients address a wide range of legal challenges across a broad range of verticals including crypto assets, payments, distributed ledger technology, digital banking, crowdfunding, wealthtech, insurtech and regtech. We advise start-up and scale-up businesses on regulation, tax, employment, incentives, IP, structuring, corporate governance and investment – supporting many towards unicorn status. For our global institutional clients, we advise on areas such as product development, commercial agreements, partnerships, investments and M&A. We also advise clients who are partnering with, or investing in, fintech firms and financial institutions when developing their own fintech solutions.

Our understanding of the base technology underpinning fintech solutions combined with our knowledge of financial regulation sets us apart. It means our clients, regulators, and policy makers want to work closely with us. For example, we were the only law firm invited to join the Bank of England’s fintech community. We also have lawyers on the ground in key fintech hubs, including Hong Kong, Singapore, the UAE and the UK.

Our clients include some of the highest profile names in the sector such as Ant Group, Monzo and Funding Circle, as well as the world’s largest financial institutions. And our team’s international so we often work on high value, complex cross border deals.

Our experience

Ant Group

We manage the ALIPAY international trade mark portfolio and undertake additional international trade mark work for the Alibaba group. The engagement includes prosecuting and defending the ALI-formative trade mark portfolio across the UK, EU27 and Hong Kong and assisting in global trade mark prosecution and enforcement.

Augmentum

We advised Augmentum in relation to its investment in iwoca Limited (an automated lending platform and a key player in the Fintech space), Monese, Zopa, Seedrs, Bullion Vault and other leading FinTech businesses. Augmentum is one of the most active and respected specialist venture capital funds with a strong focus on recognising and growing high potential FinTech companies both in the UK and Europe. We also advised on Augmentum’s IPO in March 2018.

Coinbase

We advised Coinbase on the roll-out of its services across over 100 countries, including advice on Coinbase’s IT infrastructure and scalability, as well as on enforcement of digital signatures, and cryptocurrency regulations.