Nicholas specialises in advising clients ranging from corporates to financial institutions on their derivatives and trading arrangements. He regularly works with private capital managers on the construction and implementation of hedging strategies to mitigate foreign exchange, interest rate and commodities exposures, including advising on structuring solutions to ensure optimal regulatory treatment, ISDA negotiations, collateral arrangements (including mandatory regulatory collateral as well as commercial collateral arrangements) and EMIR / UK EMIR compliance.
Nicholas also advises private capital managers and their portfolio companies on interest rate and foreign exchange hedging required in connection with debt facilities and asset-level hedging arrangements, such as facility linked interest rate swaps and deal contingent forwards and options.
He also has experience on the legal aspects of securities financing transactions and SFTR / UK SFTR, including advising on the underlying GMRAs and GMSLAs required to implement repo and stock lending platforms and other alternate sources of leverage, such as total return swaps.
Nicholas trained at a leading city law firm and joined Simmons and Simmons in August 2025. He undertook a six-month secondment at Nomura in 2019, where he worked with the special risk solutions desk.
Client Testimonials, Legal 500 (2024):
“Nicholas is solution-focused, pragmatic and highly engaged”
“Nick Baines [is] fantastic to work with. [He is] highly commercial, flexible, and [has] helped me get some very last minute things over the line in a very short timeframe”
