Linda Lerner is a partner in Halloran Farkas + Kittila LLP and the head of HFK’s New York office. She is widely recognized for her deep expertise in the regulation of financial markets and their participants. She works with clients seeking to offer innovative products and services and assists in gaining regulatory approval for them.
Linda advises broker-dealers and investment advisors on federal and state regulation of their activities, including, among other things: AML and KYC requirements; risk management; supervisory procedures; cybersecurity and privacy requirements; rule interpretation; marketing material; vendor, employee and confidentiality agreements; guidance for doing business in foreign jurisdictions and foreign broker-dealers conducting business in the U.S.; placement agent and underwriting agreements; and guidance for finders. Linda has served on a number of Nasdaq and FINRA committees focused on, among other things, trade disputes, electronic trading and trade reporting.
She is frequently sought out for her experience in obtaining approval for brokerage firms to offer and trade digital securities and to establish platforms for their trading. She works closely with SEC and FINRA senior staff to resolve challenging issues in the digital security space, including non-custodial solutions, stablecoins and offering and selling other digital assets. Linda is the founding chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Offering and Trading Tokenized Securities and frequently writes and lectures on digital assets.
Linda co-authors the Bloomberg BNA Portfolio “Broker-Dealer Registration: Demystifying the Process.” Her clients include a broad range of institutions, from serving as in-house General Counsel for a brokerage firm seeking to operate one of the first electronic trading platforms to outside counsel for global financial institutions and startups. She helps her clients launch innovative trading systems for equities, fixed income, fiat and cryptocurrency, derivatives and other instruments. Linda also helps fintech firms develop product and market strategies and assists them to meet with regulators to become preferred providers of services.
