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Sue McLean

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Social media has become an increasingly vital part of firms’ marketing strategies across industries, and the financial sector – including its growing number of financial influencers or “finfluencers” – is no exception. In light of this trend the UK financial services regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has published a consultation to update its guidance on social media financial promotions. With this new guidance, the FCA wants to ensure its expectations of financial promotions on…

Our new episode of FInsight: Global Financial Institutions Industry Podcast focuses the regulatory development f cryptoassets, following our recent publication Crypto around the World. The speakers for this episode are Sue McLean, partner and global tech lead for fintech from our London office; Iris Barsan, counsel from our Paris office; Julian Hui, senior associate from our London office, and Chris Murrer, a US attorney based in our Switzerland office. In this second part, we cover market abuse, sustainability, decentralized finance, and future developments.…

In this special edition, Sue McLean, partner and global tech lead for fintech and blockchain, talks to David Hart, a partner in our London office, and Lawrence C. Lee, a partner in our Palo Alto office, to discuss recent trends and developments around fintech. In this episode, they share their observations on recent innovations and take a closer look at various strategies behind the increase in investment and M&A activity. Fintech players, once seen as…

In December we hosted a session as Part of Tech Week 2020 that focused on “The Importance of Diversity in Tech”. Don’t worry if you missed it, we’ve summarized below some of the key take away points from the session and you can watch the full recording from this and all the other sessions here. Diversity in Tech – Challenge Faced Despite an increased focus on diversity, the tech sector still has a lot of…

On 18 December 2020, the UK House of Lords Liaison Committee on AI published a new report, AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency.  The report considers the UK government’s progress against the recommendations made by the Select Committee on AI in their 2018 report, AI in the UK: ready, willing and able? The report contains a series of new recommendations covering public understanding of AI, use of data, ethics, public trust and regulation, jobs and…

The need for businesses to be agile, innovative and data savvy to compete and thrive emerges loud and clear, but so, too, do concerns around privacy, security and integration with legacy IT systems. In its sixth year, Baker McKenzie’s 2020 Digital Transformation & Cloud Survey: The Future of Enterprise Data captures major trends and attitudes toward the use of data through a global lens of respondents in legal, technology and procurement roles, across a large cross-section of…

Questions continue to arise over the interplay of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Both PSD2 and the GDPR are complex legislation and the relationship between distinct provisions of each law and how they work together is not altogether clear, which has led to uncertainty for payment service providers, including banks. For example, when is “consent” required to access payment data and what does consent mean? To this…

On 7 September 2020, the Tech London Advocates’ (TLA) Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Group and the Law Society of England and Wales published a new joint report which sets out key issues for legal practitioners to be aware of when advising on distributed ledger technologies (DLT). Launched to coincide with the start of London Tech Week 2020, the new guidance explores a range of topics and provides a list of key recommendations on aspects relating…

The concept of the “Internet of Things” (IOT) is now well established in a consumer context. Prior to COVID-19, many industrial companies were already on considering various Industrial IOT (IIOT) use cases. COVID-19’s widespread disruption to companies operating in the sector confirmed the strategic need to embrace digital tech and automation. There are key legal issues to consider on data, service performance and cybersecurity when commencing an IIOT project. Key Takeaways The application of IIOT…