Homburger

Managing Partner: Flavio Romerio

Number of equity partners: 37

Number of other lawyers: 130

Languages:English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

Firm Overview:

Established in 1957, Homburger is one of the largest Swiss law firms, with more than 150 professionals, including certified tax experts and support professionals. Homburger advises and represents enterprises and entrepreneurs in all aspects of commercial law — transactions, proceedings and complex cases, in both a domestic and a global context.

The TechGroup - Main Areas of Practice

Curiosity in working with new technology and connected legal expertise characterizes Homburger’s practice area technology and digital economy. With the interdisciplinary team of tech-savvy and experienced lawyers, Homburger’s TechGroup supports clients who digitize their business models in a global and competitive environment, implement new technology and prepare their offerings for the future.

Homburger is a highly respected in traditional areas of finance and regulatory work and has secured innovative mandates in the areas of fintech and crypto- and crypto-backed finance.

Thanks to the teamwork of the experienced specialists of Homburger’s TechGroup, the firm can offer comprehensive and professional advice in the following areas:

■ Advising financial service providers, insurance companies and start-ups on the structuring and implementation of innovative, digitised products, e.g. in the fields of investment management (robo advice, social trading), platform and crowd funding, financial analytics (artificial intelligence, machine learning), open banking, identity and security management, payment systems and insurance solutions (on-demand insurance, eBrokers, insurance cross-selling and digital insurers)

■ Coordination with supervisory authorities (e.g. FINMA FinTech Desk), obtaining licenses (e.g. fintech licence, membership in self-regulatory organisations) and no action letters as well as leveraging networks with third parties (e.g. interest groups, technology providers)

■ Use of new technologies and platforms for capital market transactions

■ Structuring, implementation and documentation of capital market instruments tracking the performance of and/or backed or collateralised by crypto-assets, i.e. by means of exchange traded or structured products;

■ Tokenisation of securities (equities | bonds | derivatives) and other financial instruments

■ Advice on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) / Token Generating Events (TGEs)

■ Advising financial service providers and financial market infrastructures in the areas of custody services and trading (incl. digital exchanges, clearing and settlement) using innovative technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technology)

■ Coordination with supervisory authorities and representation in supervisory proceedings

The firm uses its synergies to meet clients’ highest quality expectations across disciplines. For each project, the firm put together a team of specialists, including at least one partner. It ensures that clients’ matters are dealt with in a fully professional manner, regardless of their complexity and the time constraints.

Recent work highlights of Homburger’s TechGroup in the FinTech area:

■ Advising UBS Switzerland on all legal and tax aspects of the recent upgrade of UBS key4 mortgages, UBS’ open online platform for the financing of income producing real estate. Designed to meet the needs of digital-savvy clients, the platform UBS key4 mortgages offers an uncomplicated way of extending mortgages for income producing real estate. It allows the borrower to obtain binding offers from a variety of financing providers in a structured and straightforward way.

■ Advising the Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) on the proof of concept (POC) for the tokenization of investment products as digital structured products. The Swiss banks Credit Suisse, Pictet and Vontobel conducted a POC to issue tokenized investment products recorded on a public blockchain and traded on BX Swiss, the Swiss regulated stock exchange. The issuance, trading, and settlement took place within hours, whereas in a traditional financial environment they take days. The POC lays the foundation for an alternative Swiss post-trade infrastructure that functions without central parties (central counterparty and central securities depositary) and enables participating banks to benefit from cost advantages along the entire value chain of securities transactions (issuance, settlement and custody).

■ Structuring of the world-wide first collateralised crypto-currency linked Exchange Traded Product listed on the regulated securities exchange SIX Swiss Exchange.

■ Advising 21Shares, the world's largest issuer of crypto-linked Exchange Traded Products (ETP), on the launch of a first-of-its-kind public cash tender offer for all outstanding exchange traded products of the series 21Shares Terra Classic ETP issued by 21Shares under its Exchange Traded Products Programme.

■ Advising Apex Fintech Solutions on regulatory and tax matters on its ETP emission platform and on the issuance of two crypto-linked ETPs (CF Crypto Momentum ETP and CF Crypto Web 3.0 ETP) through the platform.

■ Advising on amending the regulations applicable to crypto currency linked Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) approved by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA.

■ Advising ISP Group on structuring and documenting an issuance platform for actively managed certificates allowing the implementation of investment strategies through a securitized certificate governed by Swiss law. The platform enables independent asset managers to efficiently manage individual portfolios.

■ Providing an expert opinion regarding the tokenisation of Swiss securities issued by the investment bank of a major Swiss bank. Homburger assisted in the legal structuring of the tokenization process and provided an expert opinion confirming the legal viability of the tokenization of an investment product on the public blockchain Ethereum.

■ Advising a FinTech start-up company on the structuring and establishment of a platform that will be available in the form of a decentralized application based on a fully automated and non-custodial, permissionless smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, which will enable the platform participants/users to access, via the platform, different separate/external decentralized yield generating applications.

■ Advising a major Swiss bank in relation to all legal and regulatory aspects of a proof of concept (POC) in connection with the structuring of a new offering of digital assets to clients.

■ Advising a Swiss banking software vendor in an in-depth review of IP related to its Fintech software products.

■ Advising a major Swiss bank on all legal and regulatory aspects in connection with the structuring of a new offering of digital assets to other banks and clients.

■Advising a globally active Swiss private bank on the roll-out and implementation of its new general terms and conditions governing its client agreements in order to obtain client waivers and ensure that the bank is "cloud-ready", i.e. able to share client identifying data and personal data with affiliates and third-party service providers around the world.

Main contacts at Homburger

Daniel Haeberli

Email: [email protected]

Stefan Kramer

Email: [email protected]

Luca Dal Molin

Email: [email protected]