Thomas Vogel
Partner
Frankfurt / Paris
thomas.vogel@lw.com
+49.69.6062.6143
PRACTICES
- Africa Practice
- Capital Markets
- Derivatives, Equities & Structured Products
- Digital Assets & Web3
- Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG)
- Islamic Finance
- Structured Finance
INDUSTRIES
- Energy & Infrastructure
- Financial Institutions
EDUCATION
- Graduate Degree Economics and Finance, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, 2001
- Graduate Law Degree, University of Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne), 2000
- JD, Cornell Law School, 2000
LANGUAGES SPOKEN
- French
- English
- Japanese
PROFILE
Thomas Vogel is a partner in the Paris and Frankfurt offices of Latham & Watkins. Thomas leads the Structured Finance and Derivatives Practices and the Fintech Industry Group in Paris. He is also a member of the Financial Regulatory Practice and the Global Digital Assets & Web3 Practice.
Thomas regularly acts for global financial services firms, investment managers, hedge and investment funds, sovereign funds, and UHNW individuals. He advises on structured finance transactions, alternative investment structures across asset classes including structured strategic equity solutions, structured fixed-income transactions (delivered in synthetic format through derivatives instruments or in funded format through debt securities), strategic contingent hedging transactions, regulatory capital and synthetic risk transfer transactions, NPL portfolio transfers, synthetic credit, fund, energy, catastrophe and longevity derivatives, structured repo, and stock-lending transactions.
Thomas also advises emerging companies, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), financial institutions, and investment managers on complex regulatory challenges in the development of bespoke financial crypto-asset and cryptocurrency technologies or DeFi market solutions including token sales, trading, refinancing, clearing, and settlement solutions on distributed ledger technology. He also advises clients on domestic and cross-border cutting-edge Fintech initiatives. He has also advised numerous corporates on innovative NFT and semi-NFT projects.
Thomas regularly advises clients on financial regulatory issues (including in the crypto space) and pre-contentious financial disputes in the context of mediation, arbitration and litigation procedures, as well as on internal derivatives compliance programs and derivatives clearing documentation.
Thomas has acquired years of transactional experience in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo both as a private practitioner (with a Magic Circle firm) and senior in-house counsel (with a leading US investment bank in New York). In recent years, he has represented clients in multi-billion dollar structured transactions in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Thomas is a member of the Frankfurt Bar Association.
Accolades
Named a Notable Practitioner. IFLR 1000 France 2022
Clients praise Thomas: ‘Thomas Vogel is a brilliant lawyer, able to deal with a lot of varied subjects and to build bridges between issues. His dual expertise in English law/French law is very valuable. His expertise in derivatives makes him an essential person in Paris.’ The Legal 500 EMEA 2022
Thomas is recognized as a Leading Individual. Chambers Europe 2022
Named a Leading Individual. “He is very competent, experienced, smart and pleasant to work with.” The Legal 500 EMEA 2020
Named a Notable Practitioner. IFLR 1000 France 2020
Named a Leading Individual. The Legal 500 EMEA 2019
“A very knowledgeable practitioner” Chambers Europe 2020
“Highly experienced” and “Committed”. The Legal 500 EMEA 2017
“Highly competent and experienced in the field of derivatives” The Legal 500 EMEA 2016
EXPERIENCE
Thomas' experience includes advising:
- Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) in the refinancing of Ethereum-based security token via a structured margin facility denominated in stablecoins (2022)
- French corporate in the repurchase of its own shares for up to €1.7 billion (2021)
- French corporate in a tender offer of existing bonds and new €500 million bond issue (2021)
- US investment fund on the purchase of a €600 million portfolio of French non-performing loans (NPLs) (2020)
- French Asset Manager on a €100 million auction-settled credit-linked note issued by a French bank and linked to a linear basket of 5 reference entities (2020)
- US investment bank in €900 million subordinated loan financing eligible for Tier 2 capital treatment (2020)
- US bank on an €200 million accelerated share buy-back in French publicly listed company (2019)
- US investment fund on a €1.6 billion synthetic risk transfer transaction of a portfolio of French consumer loans (2020)
- French corporate on a €800 million “collar” derivative to hedge the sale of a minority stake in another publicly-listed French company (2019)
- US investment bank on a €800 million derivative “call spread” hedging strategy on French listed shares (2019)
- German investment bank on a derivatives strategy (composed of a combination of Put Options and Total Return Swaps) aimed at providing a capital guarantee to managed equity funds offered by a French asset manager (2018)
- Sovereign investor in margin loan over shares of German publicly-listed company (2018)
- French corporate on a €400 million structured share buy-back transaction documented via an equity forward derivative (2017)
- French asset manager on entering into an investment management transaction to manage in excess of €10 billion of financial assets (2017)
- French corporate on a €900 million share buy-back transaction documented via structured mandate for the repurchase of own shares (2017)