Financial Markets

Leading Financial Markets Lawyer Ciarán McGonagle Joins Tokenovate as Chief Legal and Product Officer

By FMinsights||Est. Reading Time: 2 minutes|

Cambridge, 1st July 2024 – Tokenovate, a company specialising in trade lifecycle event management, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ciarán McGonagle as Chief Legal and Product Officer. In this new role, Ciarán will lead the creation and execution of its legal-first product vision and strategy, while also serving as in-house counsel, as the company embarks on its next phase of developments.

Ciarán joins from ISDA, where he served as Assistant General Counsel focusing on digital assets and smart contracts. During Ciarán’s time at ISDA he contributed to the ongoing development of the Common Domain Model (CDM), co-led development of the Digital Asset Derivatives Definitions, advanced ISDA’s work on tokenisation, and coordinated ISDA’s legal work across multiple EU regulatory initiatives including EMIR, CSDR and the BRRD. Additionally, Ciarán has led several industry groups including ISDA’s Digital Asset Legal Group and Legal Technology Group, and is a highly respected and active contributor to industry initiatives, including those led by the Financial Markets and Law Committee, UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, and the UK Law Commission.

Prior to ISDA, Ciarán was a Vice President at Deutsche Bank, an Associate at Morgan Stanley and, after completing his Law degree at Queens in Belfast, trained at Allen & Overy in London. Ciarán has published numerous articles and opinion pieces, and together with Professor Christopher Clack at UCL, authored the seminal “Smart Derivatives Contracts: the ISDA Master Agreement and the automation of payments and deliveries” whitepaper published in 2019.

Ciarán will bring to Tokenovate extensive legal expertise and experience, and deep understanding of digital assets, technologies, markets and smart contracts. His strong reputation and track record as an industry force for change will help Tokenovate to drive forward the next phase of its growth strategy.

Richard Baker, Tokenovate co-founder and CEO welcomed Ciarán to the team saying: “We are delighted to have Ciarán on board. We firmly believe that the end-to-end lifecycle of a tokenised financial asset, and its representation as a tradeable derivative, must be rooted in legal-first engineering principles. Code is not law, law is law!”

He continued “Ciarán’s significant regulatory and legal expertise, coupled with his exceptional track record in driving innovation and change in the derivatives industry, will greatly enhance our strategy for product and platform development. We can’t wait to start working with Ciarán, and to leverage his extensive legal knowledge, proven ability to drive policy and product development, and expertise in navigating complex regulatory environments to advance our product vision and strategy.”

Ciarán McGonagle said: “Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to witness first hand how Tokenovate operates, especially with regard to its commitment to integrating traditional industry standards and protocols, like the Common Domain Model, within its cutting-edge, digitised framework for programmatic lifecycle event management. I am excited to join Tokenovate’s highly innovative team and to contribute to delivering the next phase of its go-to-market strategy.”