ISLA Connects Educational Briefing with Brown Brothers Harriman & Cleary Gottlieb – Tokenization: Back to Basics

Fran joined ISLA Americas in 2024 as Chief Executive and Head of Business, leading advocacy efforts with policymakers and regulators while collaborating with the board and ISLA EMEA on the Association’s objectives to ensure the needs and requirements of member firms across the Americas are met.

Prior to joining ISLA Americas, Fran spent 22 years at the Risk Management Association (RMA), with the last 16 focused on Capital Markets Risk and Securities Lending. His role encompassed securities lending, regulatory outreach, and various risk management functions, including funding, traded market risk, liquidity, counterparty risk, collateral management, model risk, and country risk.

Fran completed the University of Pennsylvania’s RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program as well as receiving his Master of Business Administration in Finance in addition to International Business from Philadelphia University, and has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Pennsylvania State University.

Brandon M. Hammer’s practice focuses on a broad range financial regulatory, market infrastructure, bankruptcy, and creditors’ rights issues. He has assisted buy- and sell-side clients, as well as market utilities, on complex and novel issues arising from a changing technological landscape.

His clients include U.S. and non-U.S. financial institutions, clearinghouses, sovereigns, market disruptors and end users. He is frequently counsel to leading financial market trade associations and ad hoc coalitions on major industry initiatives and industry-standard opinions.

He regularly represents clients before federal regulatory agencies and self-regulatory organizations.

His full bio can be found here: https://www.clearygottlieb.com/professionals/brandon-m-hammer

Mark Lurie is the CEO of M1X Global, which supports the Republic of the Marshall Islands in its issuance of USDM1, the first sovereign bond issued directly on the blockchain in tokenized form. He also serves on the board of an NYDFS-regulated stablecoin issuer and is a Venture Partner at FJLabs. Previously, Mark founded and exited three venture-backed companies, two of which were in the digital asset space (DeFi). He is a former investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, where his investments included Twilio (NYSE: TWLO). Mark received his MBA from Harvard Business School and BA from Harvard College. He lives in the Lincoln, MA.

Alec Mitchell’s practice focuses on financial institutions, creditors’ rights, regulatory matters, financial technology, and market infrastructure. He advises numerous multinational investment and financial services companies with documentation addressing close-out netting rights, cross-collateralization, operational netting, and custodial arrangements. Alec has assisted a number of digital asset firms with respect to the custody and insolvency treatment of digital assets and the commercial law and regulatory treatment of a wide variety of digital asset products. He also advises clients on a variety of derivatives regulatory and transactional matters, including issues related to Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act and the use of proprietary indices in financial products.

His full bio can be found here: https://www.clearygottlieb.com/professionals/alec-foote-mitchell

Deborah North is a partner in the Firm’s Financial Institutions Group.  Deborah’s practice covers a broad range of derivatives and structured finance transactions, focused on OTC derivatives, structured synthetic products, and the cross-border security arrangements and the regulatory issues they often entail.  She advises clients on a range of products, including credit-linked notes, structured repos and credit default swaps.  Deborah has an extensive opinion practice focused on bankruptcy remoteness, netting and creditor’s rights issues.  She is called upon by clients active in the legal/tech and fintech space to create documentation frameworks and multi-jurisdictional regulatory and bankruptcy analysis for their start-up offerings.

Deborah is a leading lawyer for the clearing of OTC derivatives and has developed an extensive derivatives regulatory practice.  She has advised several financial institutions on their registration as Swap Dealers and security-based Swap Dealers, including on all aspects of compliance materials, documentation, and interaction with the SEC, CFTC, NFA, FDIC, and OCC, including in the context of M&A transactions.

Her full bio can be found here: https://www.clearygottlieb.com/professionals/deborah-north

John – based in London – is Associate General Counsel, Global Co-Head of Regulatory Strategy, for Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), a bank group headquartered in New York.

John chairs the Association of Global Custodians – European Committee and chairs the Post-Trade Legal Committee for the Association of Financial Markets for Europe (AFME). John sits on UK and EU task forces focused on accelerated settlement of securities as well as on European-level cross-sector steering and working groups focused on other post-trade matters. As a member of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section Task Force on Securities Holding Infrastructure, John contributed to its Final Report on possible reforms in U.S. law published in the ABA’s Business Lawyer in the summer of 2024. John has provided legal support to various cross-industry digital assets collateralisation projects.

John has contributed to books and publications focused mainly on securities custody and dispositions and digital assets. John for many years has lectured on financial services law at Leiden University, The Netherlands and King’s College, London, well as in Ireland’s Certified Investment Fund Director Institute.

John is admitted to the Illinois Bar (1988).

Kathryn E. Witchger is Senior Legal Counsel at Fidelity Investments, where her practice focuses on technological financial regulation and legal product development, with a particular emphasis on crypto and digital assets. She is the standing author of the investment securities section of the American Bar Association’s Annual U.C.C. Survey.

Prior to joining Fidelity, Ms. Witchger was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, based in the firm’s New York and Paris offices, where she advised major financial institutions on the regulation of both traditional financial activities and emerging technologies. She has extensive experience in securities laws, creditors’ rights, capital markets, and fintech matters. She is a member of the New York bar.