As ex-global head of the firm’s Capital Markets practice, Michael is widely acknowledged as an authority on financial markets law and practice.
Michael’s experience includes advising on:

the establishment and operation of FMIs, such as central counterparties (CCPs), payment and settlement systems, central securities depositories (CSDs), clearance systems, exchanges and trading venues covering securities and derivatives contracts, as well as platforms for margining, collateral transformation and FX trading, together with the regulatory capital treatment of exposures to financial entities and products
a wide range of derivatives and structured products, including securitised, OTC and exchange traded derivatives, repackagings, investment fund products (including CPPI products), proprietary financial indices/benchmarks, synthetic products, collateralised debt obligations and note and warrant programmes, that includes the trading, clearing, leveraging and custody of such financial instruments, together with benchmark reform, Brexit and UK bank ringfencing
the digitisation of FMIs and platforms and similar fintech related design and upgrades of FMIs and platforms, as well as digitised and tokenised products and decentralised finance

Michael led the firm’s derivatives and structured products practice between 2002 and 2010, was the firm’s global knowledge and learning partner for four years until 2012 and was global head of Capital Markets between 2015 and 2021. He was a board member of the Futures Industry Association from 2016 to 2025. Michael developed the firm’s knowledge and thought leadership relating to the Eurozone crisis and has since been closely involved in the development of the firm’s knowledge and thought leadership relating to clearing and settlement and fintech, including digital assets, smart contracts, decentralised finance and settlement finality.

Work Highlights

Michael has led on many market-leading derivatives and fintech-related activities. These include advising:

EIB on the issuance of its Eur 100,000,000 0.000% Notes due 2023 registered in the Ethereum public blockchain
on the development of SwapAgent, a system established by LCH for the efficient posting of variation margin for OTC derivatives
advising the London Metal Exchange on the dematerialisation and digitisation of LME Warrants
advising FIA and ISDA on complex and transformative cross border insolvency analysis relating to customers of US FCMs outside the US
as the lead partner on the development of the CCP Risk Review for FIA
on the drafting of the claim resolution agreement between Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (in administration) and certain of its trust asset creditors

Linklaters advises FIA on new client clearing model in Europe

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