Timo Förster

As an associate in our Finance & Financial Regulation Practice Group located in Frankfurt, I advise international and national clients on regulatory issues and finance law.

In daily practice, my advisory focus is on issues relating to the regulation of credit institutions, investment firms and payment service providers, plus financial market instruments as well as sustainability (ESG) related aspects.

With regards to ESG related aspects, I am advising global companies from a variety of sectors on several topics regarding inter alia the Sustainability Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) the Taxonomy Regulation (TR) as well as potential (group) reporting obligations and management reports under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) relating to European as well as to non-European entities.

I advise established companies in the FinTech sector in connection with new technologies and digitalisation aspects, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), smart contracts, blockchain, or tokenisation. I also have a focus on new payment technologies such as instant payments and advice on Open Finance / Open Banking business models.

Furthermore, I am advising on matters regarding internal financing of groups of companies (such as cash pooling structures) as well as corporate and project financing.

With regards to my legal traineeship, I partly spent my traineeship at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in the unit responsible for the supervision of alternative investment fund managers, investment funds and depositaries and partly at the Directorate General of the European Commission in Brussels, responsible for financial stability, financial services and capital market union (FISMA).