Dr. Florian Reul

Florian heads our German Fintech practice and has considerable experience in advising on regulatory aspects of innovative structures, products and systems. 

He regularly advises investment banks, broker-dealers, market infrastructure providers, payment service providers and start-ups on the deployment of technologies to support new or existing business lines, especially on the creation and issuance of novel instruments and investment structures. 

He has particular experience in license application procedures, the implementation of governance structures and AML requirements. He further advises on new product development in the context of market infrastructures, notably trading, clearing, payment and settlement systems.

He also focuses on the regulatory aspects of the collaboration between technology providers and financial institution.

Work highlights

• Several CRR credit institutions: advising on licensing applications for crypto custody services and crypto securities registrar business as well as implementing relevant governance structures;
• Solaris: advice on several significant projects such as the setup of white label cooperation with vivid money and the  setup of Samsung Pay in Germany;
• A leading international investment bank: advising on several tokenisation projects, including in the context of a digital platform for the issuance, trading and settlement of financial instrument and on an DLT payment infrastructure;
• Commerzbank AG and MainIncubator: advising on several DLT projects, such as a tokenised securities trading platform and DLT based e-money projects as well as AML and governance structures;
• Apple Inc. on regulatory questions;
• Trade Republic Bank: advising on its European expansion and on several product related projects. 

Quotations & Rankings

Florian is consistently ranked since 2021 as “Star Associate” in Chambers, FinTech Germany and as “Rising Star” in Legal 500, FinTech Germany.

Florian has founded the Digital Economy Group of Linklaters Germany (which is now part of the Linklaters Technology Sector) and has won “1st Place ‘Best of Legal Award’ (WirtschaftsWoche)” for the category ‘Team of the year’ in 2021.

Florian is a regular speaker on the regulatory and legal aspects of distributed ledger technology, digital assets and smart contracts. He is a member of the Jury for the Fintech Germany Award.

Before focusing on financial regulatory law, he was a structured finance lawyer and was seconded to the London office of Linklaters.

Florian studied law and economics at the University of Bayreuth and law at the University of Münster. He holds a doctorate from the University of Leipzig.

He speaks English and German.