Carl Fernandes

Carl has over 25 years of experience across the Hong Kong SAR and UK markets advising a wide range of financial services clients, including multi-disciplinary investment banks, broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers (including hedge funds and private equity/credit funds), private banks and fintechs.

Carl advises on a broad range of complex regulatory issues, with a particular focus on the scope of licensing requirements in the context of cross-border business, the full range of wholesale market conduct requirements and restrictions, and the design, development, and implementation of systems and controls to manage these regulatory risks.

Carl provides advice on these issues in a wide variety of contexts, including influencing and implementing regulatory reform, assisting clients with evolutionary changes to their business platforms, supporting clients through intense supervisory or enforcement interactions with regulators, and conducting due diligence and structuring acquisitions or disposals of regulated businesses.

Carl has been recognised by legal ratings agencies for his work in both Hong Kong and the UK.

Work highlights

Carl’s experience has included advising:

• On the establishment of a central securities depository based on distributed ledger technology
• A global investment bank on the regulatory aspects attached to the disposal of its fund investment platform, and post-sale cooperation agreement
• A number of global investment banks and asset managers on regulatory change projects, including in relation to extraterritorial impacts
• Various firms in connection with their establishment of regulated operations in Asia
• A global investment bank in relation to both an internal investigation and also several foreign regulatory investigations into alleged market manipulation on a foreign stock and futures exchange
• A global investment bank in relation to the restructuring of local governance arrangements at its UK subsidiary to best meet both regulatory expectations and the commercial dynamics influencing the role of the subsidiary in its global business plans
• A wide range of CASS issues both in the context of an FCA enforcement investigation and separately in supporting a firm through a wide-ranging s166 review

Carl is regularly called on to contribute to various industry fora. He has recently delivered a series of lectures for Finance Unlocked on wholesale markets regulation and regulating trading behaviour.

Carl’s recent publications include:

• UK challenger banks: key regulatory issues in a changing market, Thomson Reuters Practical Law
• The United Kingdom’s client assets regime: Problematic issues of threshold application, Journal of Financial Compliance

Carl holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from Murdoch University, Western Australia.