Tom Bicknell

Full Profile

Tom has been based in Dubai for the last ten years prior to which he practised across several leading financial centres in Asia Pacific. 

His practice focuses on non-contentious financial services work, with particular expertise in managing large-scale and cross-border regulatory mandates for international and regional banks, insurers, intermediaries, and fund managers.

Tom’s experience also spans the emerging fintech sector in the Middle East, advising clients involved in the region’s transition to a digital economy. This includes supporting regulated digital asset and payments businesses on their market entry, guiding financial institutions through digital transformation, and assisting public bodies in developing their regulatory frameworks.

Tom is currently ranked Band 1 by Chambers for Fintech and as a Leading Partner by Legal 500 for Financial Regulation.

Experience

Experience prior to joining Clyde & Co

Insurance

• Acting for one of the largest trade credit insurers in the world on all regulatory, corporate and commercial aspects of their business including authorisation and ongoing compliance, corporate structuring, product wordings and regional expansion.
• Acting for a multinational brokerage on their regulatory compliance, corporate structuring and licensing expansion.
• Acting for a FTSE 100 wealth manager on various regulatory/compliance, inter-company arrangements and product roll outs.

Banking

• Acting for a regional bank on the structuring and regulatory treatment of its client monies and trust account products.
• Acting for a UK bank on the structuring and regulatory treatment of a proposed digital payments offering into the market.
• Acting for a regional bank on its digital payments and open-banking service lines including engagement with multiple regulatory authorities across the region.

Brokers/Exchanges

• Acting for a multinational commodities trader on the structuring of its UK-UAE broker dealer arrangements to ensure FCA and DFSA compliance.
• Acting for a multinational CFDs, options and derivatives trading platform on its cross-border offering into the region; mapping out its licensing footprint; supporting it to obtain broker-dealer and custodian licenses from the Securities and Commodities Authority and the Saudi Capital Markets Authority.

Funds

• Acting for a leading UK wealth manager on the cross border offering of their suite of fund products.
• Acting for several DIFC-based fund managers to structure and obtain the regulatory approval of their fund offerings.

Crypto

• Advising a regional government department on the creation of a holistic fintech regime covering all aspects of the digital asset space, conducting a global benchmarking exercise and managing a team of representatives from financial regulators to consult and finalise the scope of the regime.
• Advising on the structuring and regulatory approval of the UAE’s first digital asset backed fund and digital asset exchange traded product, on Nasdaq Dubai.
• Acting for a multinational digital securities primary issuance and secondary trading platform to structure their compliance model and obtain capital markets services and recognised market operator licenses.
• Acting for a global derivatives and crypto spot exchange on its licensing from the UAE’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority.
• Acting for several of the world’s top five crypto spot exchange and defi platforms on the licensing and regulatory treatment of key products lines across the GCC jurisdictions.

Payments

• Acting for one of SE Asia’s largest online gaming and payment processing platforms on their cross-border payment solutions and regional licensing footprint.
• Acting for a leading regional institutional payments provider on their product structuring and roll-out, regional licensing strategy and banking partnership arrangements.
• Acting for one of the largest fintech/payments processors in China on the cross-border offering of their payment aggregation product offering into various GCC markets.
• Currently acting for several regional and international payment platform operators to secure a license from the UAE Central Bank under its Retail Payments Services regime.