C. MARK LASKAY

• Negotiating and structuring master trading agreements covering swaps, derivatives, forward contracts, foreign currency pairs and other trading, hedging and investment instruments and strategies, on behalf of investment funds as well as commercial and industrial end users

• Advising on trading and investment activities conducted or intermediated by broker-dealers, professional investors and other financial intermediaries

• Representing lenders, borrowers and sponsors under credit facilities, including project finance and asset-based lending facilities, and

• Advising on and negotiating other structured financial products, e.g. leveraged leasing facilities, catastrophe (“cat”) bonds, financing facilities backed by master service agreement revenues, automobile leases and similar assets, and loan warehousing and securitization.

He has participated in transactions involving assets and markets in the United States and around the world, including in Europe, Latin America and the BRICS countries.

His clients include a diverse group of participants in the public, private and over-the-counter financial markets, such as managers and sponsors of hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, oil and gas and real estate funds, real estate investment trusts, proprietary trading companies, investment advisers, commodity pool operators (CPOs) and commodity trading advisors (CTAs), sponsors of infrastructure projects financed in the international credit markets, financial and commercial/industrial end users of risk hedging products (e.g. investment funds with credit-driven strategies, power generation and distribution companies, users of jet fuel), broker-dealers and financial exchanges.

Mark has authored or co-authored various client alerts, memorandums and other publications related to the financial services industry, including Private Investment Funds and Unregistered Marketers, The Wall Street Lawyer (February 2015).

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Laskay had 17 years of experience in sophisticated legal practices in New York City. He worked as an attorney with the international law firms Akin Gump, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft and Hunton & Williams, and co-founded Benedetto Laskay LLC, a boutique law firm based in New York that he operated for seven years.

Mr. Laskay began his legal career in Bogota, Colombia advising major U.S. and European-based multinationals regarding various foreign investment activities in South America, after obtaining an LL.M. degree in International Business Law at the University of London.

Reflecting a life-long fascination with the financial markets, Mark regularly participates in conferences, seminars and industry meetings on quantitative finance, high frequency data, modeling of financial market structures and risks, and numerous other topics related to the financial system. He has also actively traded futures, FX, options and equities as an independent trader for his own account, often applying technical analysis-based strategies.  He has a particular interest in phenomena surrounding market "crashes" and markets experiencing extreme dislocation and distress, including their possible causes and the potential for developing reliable "early warning" indicators of such conditions.

Mr. Laskay has served as a member of the Derivatives and Structured Finance Committee, the Securities Regulation Committee and the Private Investment Funds Subcommittee of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA). Acting on behalf of the NYSBA's Securities Regulation Committee, Mr. Laskay drafted a comment letter that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in response to proposed changes to the private placement exemption for investment funds. The letter was later cited by the SEC in another regulatory action.

Languages

• Fluent in written and conversational Spanish, including formal Spanish legal terminology

• Experience with French, German, Portuguese and Hungarian

Education

• University of LondonL.L.M. in International Business Law

• University of Texas School of LawJ.D.

• Baylor UniversityB.B.A. in Accounting and Finance

Affiliations

• New York State Bar Association

• New York City Bar Association

• International Association for Quantitative Finance (IAQF)

• Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA)

Admissions & QUALFICATIONS

• New York State Court

• Federal Court for the S.D.N.Y.

• Republic of Colombia (tarjeta profesional de abogado)

• Texas (inactive)

• District of Columbia, Washington D.C. (inactive)

• CPA, Texas (inactive)