Michael Voisin

As global head of the firm’s Capital Markets practice, Michael is widely acknowledged as an authority on financial markets law and practice. He advises 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
• 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 and was also the firm’s global knowledge and learning partner for four years until 2012 and has been global head of Capital Markets since 2015. Michael has been a board member of the Futures Industry Association since 2016. 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 in relation to cryptoassets, smart contracts and settlement finality.

Work Highlights

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

• on the development of SwapAgent, a system established by LCH for the efficient posting of variation margin for OTC derivatives
• the London Metal Exchange on the dematerialisation and digitisation of LME Warrants
• FIA and ISDA on complex and transformative cross border insolvency analysis relating to customers of US FCMs outside the US
• Benchmark reform, Brexit and UK bank ringfencing
• 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

Michael sits on the global board of the Futures Industry Association.

He regularly speaks at FIA and ISDA conferences.