ISLA Connects Educational Briefing with Cleary Gottlieb – Tokenization: Back to Basics

Reporting to the ISLA Americas’ Board, chaired by Mark Whipple, Global Head of Securities Lending, Invesco, Fran is responsible for the overall management of the ISLA Americas’ business. Fran oversees all day-to-day operational activities and functions, including events, infrastructure, facilities management, and membership, while working with relevant counterpart(s) across EMEA and the US, to ensure overall strategic alignment with ISLA’s broader aims and objectives.

Fran brings over two decades of association management experience, having previously held various leadership roles at the Risk Management Association (RMA), including his most recent role as Head of Financial Risk Management and Securities Lending, where he oversaw the delivery of the Annual Securities Finance & Collateral Management Conference.

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

Carson is an experienced attorney specializing in securities regulation and financial market utilities oversight. Carson currently serves as Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel at DTCC, where he provides wide-ranging legal support and advice to DTCC’s three registered clearing agencies – Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, National Securities Clearing Corporation, and The Depository Trust Company – each designated as a systemically important financial market utility for their respective roles in the clearance and settlement of cash-market securities, including transactions in U.S. Government debt, mortgage- backed securities, equities, corporate and municipal debt, exchange-traded funds, institutional trades, and money-market instruments.

Prior to joining DTCC, Carson held leadership roles at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and FINRA, gaining extensive expertise in clearing agency oversight and securities law enforcement. Carson holds an LL.M. in Securities and Financial Regulation, with distinction, from Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law, and a B.A. from Dickinson College.

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

Muyiwa Odeniyide is a Director at BlackRock focusing on digital assets and AI regulatory policy. Before BlackRock, Muyiwa was a Director & Associate General Counsel at Nasdaq where he focused on digital assets and AI legal and policy issues and served as a legal partner to Nasdaq’s equities, options, and enforcement teams. Prior to Nasdaq, Muyiwa practiced law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where his practice focused on complex civil litigation, securities enforcement, and antitrust. Prior to law school, Muyiwa worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young. Muyiwa is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was an appointee to the New York City Bar Association’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies and its Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence in Commerce and Finance. Muyiwa graduated with a BS in Finance from the University of Maryland College Park, and with a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.

Caroline D. Pham is Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at MoonPay. In her role, she oversees MoonPay’s global legal, compliance, regulatory, governance, and enterprise administrative functions, helping strengthen the company’s operating foundation as it scales and expands into new markets and products.

An internationally recognized leader at the intersection of financial regulation, capital markets, and digital assets, Caroline brings 25 years of experience across law, finance, and technology, including over a decade focused on crypto and blockchain.

Prior to joining MoonPay, Caroline served as acting Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where she led an agency of more than 650 employees and oversaw a $365 million budget. During her tenure, Caroline delivered results on providing regulatory clarity, right-sizing regulations, promoting innovation, and ending regulation by enforcement.

Before the CFTC, Caroline was a Managing Director at Citigroup, where she held senior global leadership roles across Legal, Compliance, Citi Chief Administrative Office, and the Institutional Clients Group.

Caroline earned a B.A. from UCLA and a certificate from UCLA Anderson School of Management, and she received her J.D. from The George Washington University Law School. She is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

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).

Ferdisha Snagg’s practice focuses on financial services law and regulation. Ferdisha has a wide range of non-contentious experience advising banks, investment banks, asset managers, and market infrastructures. She regularly advises on a variety of financial services and regulatory issues including financial markets regulation, financial collateral and financial market infrastructure regulation, and banking regulation.

She has written and presented extensively on legal and regulatory issues surrounding distributed ledger technology and cryptoassets.

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