Overview
(September 24, 2024, Washington, DC and New York, NY) — Steptoe LLP has launched a Financial Innovation and Regulation (FIR) practice, expanding its existing and extensive capabilities in financial services and fintech, and reflecting the rapidly increasing role of emergent technologies in financial services.
Working at the intersection of the regulatory, product, transactional, and policy environment, the cross-disciplinary FIR practice team is comprised of attorneys with vast experience across the fintech, financial services and digital assets markets, including:
- Alan Cohn, FIR practice lead and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security
- Stephen Aschettino, Payments team lead, former leader of the US Fintech practice at Norton Rose Fulbright and former Chief Legal Officer of a leading payments processor
- Coy Garrison, Digital Assets and Decentralized Finance team lead and former counsel to US Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester M. Peirce
- Andrew Owens, Consumer Financial Services team co-lead and consumer financial services regulatory attorney formerly of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan
- Juliana Gerrick, Consumer Financial Services team co-lead formerly of Goodwin
- Benjamin Saul, Banking team lead and former leader of the Consumer Financial Enforcement group at Greenberg Traurig
- Alexandra Scheibe, Financial Products and Markets team lead and former head of the Fintech & Blockchain Transactions practice at McDermott Will & Emery
The full FIR practice team can be viewed on our website.
The FIR group is bolstered by an existing Steptoe team comprised of financial industry veterans that includes the former president and co-CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a former in-house counsel to one of the US’s largest commodity producers and one of the US’s largest custodial banks, and the former general counsel to the US Senate Banking Committee.
FIR clients include a diverse range of emerging and established companies, including global financial institutions, regional banks, venture capital firms, mobile payment providers, payments companies, mobile wallet providers, consumer financial services companies, fintech financing platforms, cryptocurrency companies and exchanges, stablecoin companies, digital asset service providers, software developers, financial market infrastructure utilities, and financial industry associations.
"The policy and regulatory environment for innovation in financial services is a complex web of intersecting and competing jurisdictional forces – both in the United States and abroad," said FIR practice lead, Alan Cohn. "Steptoe has a long track record of advising on cutting-edge financial products, regulations, and technologies. Building on that track record, the firm has brought together a team to provide a one-stop shop for handling new and emergent financial services regulatory, product, transactional, and policy issues."
The expanded FIR team leverages the deep knowledge base of Steptoe's commercial litigation, investigations and white collar, international trade and regulatory compliance, project finance, and consumer financial services practices. Steptoe is already known for having represented a major cryptocurrency exchange and a major stablecoin company in connection with investigations by multiple enforcement agencies, including the New York Attorney General's Office and the CFTC. The team is now working with Steptoe’s commercial litigation practice on FDIC civil enforcement matters, with its investigations and white-collar group on digital asset enforcement issues, and with its international trade and regulatory compliance practice on anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance issues. The team's recent additions also have served as lead counsel to the digital assets units within several major banks, represented traditional financial services institutions in developing and launching real-world-asset tokenization platforms and tokenized products and services, worked with fintech unicorns to launch US lending platforms, advised major credit card issuers on all aspects of designing and launching new products and services, and represented leading financial institutions and fintechs in contentious supervision issues involving federal banking and consumer financial protection regulators.
About Steptoe
In more than 110 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
