Our leadership
Learn more
Brett has a broad transactional and advisory practice, advising on the law and regulation applicable to a broad range of energy, commodity, and environmental products and markets.
Experience
Representative matters
Representative matters
Advising a UK corporate on structuring and negotiating a corporate PPA with a major energy company relating to offshore wind generation. The structure was unusual in that it included features to shelter the corporate from exposure to low generation volumes.
Advising on a wide range of matters relating to the trading and regulatory treatment of guarantees of origin of renewable electricity.
Advising a European power and gas company on regulatory and structuring issues associated with intra-group financial PPAs relating to its UK onshore wind portfolio.
Power and Gas Trading
Advising a UK corporate on structuring and negotiating a corporate PPA with a major energy company relating to offshore wind generation. The structure was unusual in that it included features to shelter the corporate from exposure to low generation volumes.
Advising on a wide range of matters relating to the trading and regulatory treatment of guarantees of origin of renewable electricity.
Advising a European power and gas company on regulatory and structuring issues associated with intra-group financial PPAs relating to its UK onshore wind portfolio.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on drafting the proforma industry standard REMIT reporting agreements used to report OTC power and gas trading.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on the implications of “Brexit” for trading in EU emissions allowances.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on the MiFID II regulatory perimeter for commodity derivatives.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on the implications for EFET general agreements of the introduction of the EU’s TTF “price cap”.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on the development of EFET’s EDRS platform to allow standard changes to documentation to be agreed on a multilateral basis.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on the implications of financial sanctions on Russia.
Advising Energy Traders Europe on drafting the EFET EMIR Risk Mitigation Techniques Agreement.
Advising a U.S. based energy trader in relation to credit concerns regarding a power and gas trading counterparty, including advice on whether a “Material Adverse Change” (MAC) had occurred under standard EFET language. Advising on negotiations to a satisfactory mutually agreed termination.
Advising several clients on power and gas trading agreement close-outs including advice on EFET, ISDA and bespoke trading documentation.
Advising EFET, ISDA and the FIA jointly on advocacy relating to Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill to ensure that commodities trading benefited from adequate carve-outs to protect close-out netting from the moratorium payment holiday and the prohibition on termination of agreements due to the occurrence of insolvency related events.
Advising the FIA, as rights holder to the Grid Trade Master Agreement (GTMA), on the development by EFET of a GTMA Annex.
Advising the FIA on revisions to the GTMA.
Advising a global investment bank on selling its power and gas trading book.
Advising on direct market access agreements, energy management services arrangements and other structured trading arrangements.
Advising the buyer on the purchase of a commodity derivatives business, including advising on transferring customer positions and relationships.
Carbon Trading
Advising, negotiating, and preparing template documentation for emissions trading in the EU ETS on the standard form ISDA, IETA and EFET documentation.
Advising a variety of non-EEA market participants on the opening of EUA trading accounts within the EEA.
Advising a major market participant on the implications under its standard EU emissions trading documentation of the potential closure by the French authorities of its EUA trading account.
Advising various market participants on standard form term sheets and forward trading documentation relating to voluntary carbon credits.
Advising various market participants on the extension of the EU ETS to maritime emissions.
Advising on auction participation in the EU ETS and UK ETS.
Advising on a wide range of regulatory issues associated with carbon trading including the regulatory classification of trading in EUAs, UKAs, voluntary carbon credits and a variety of other carbon allowances and renewable energy certificates; and advice on regulatory perimeter issues.
Advising on taking security over EUAs and UKAs.
Advising on EUA repos.
Advice on prepayment arrangements relating to voluntary carbon credits.
Advice on intra-group and third-party custody and account arrangements relating to EUAs.
Listed Derivatives
Advising the European arm of an international investment bank regarding exposures to its clearing broker affiliate and giving and updating CRR Article 305(2)(c) opinions relating to its account structure on ICE Clear Europe.
Advising an exchange group on requirements to set up an organized trading facility (OTF) to benefit from the “REMIT carve-out” for power and gas trading on OTFs.
Advising the Dubai Mercantile Exchange on its launch, including advising on its flagship Oman crude oil futures contract and successful application to the Dubai Financial Services Authority to become an Authorised Market Institution.
Advising NYMEX on NYMEX Europe Limited, the only successful application by an open outcry exchange to FSA for UK-recognised investment exchange status, and a successful application to establish an MTF (multilateral trading facility).
Advising several clearing brokers on their standard futures clearing agreements and margin finance agreements.
Advising a futures clearing broker on close-outs and situations with counterparties in financial difficulties.
Advising several clients on the MF Global default.
Exchange-Traded Notes and Other Complex Products
Advising HANetf on the structuring, documentation and launch of SparkChange Physical Carbon EUA ETC, the first physically-backed listed exchange traded commodity product, relating to EU emissions allowances, launched in Europe. The structure includes an Irish ETC issuer, a Jersey backing issuer, and security over a registry account held by the Jersey entity in the Luxembourg section of the EU registry. Since the product was initially listed in the UK we have advised (with Irish counsel) on its listing in Ireland, as well as amendments to reflect the full fungibility of aviation allowances with other EUAs.
Advising an oil major, which provided backing to the issuer, on the world's first exchange traded commodity product linked to crude oil futures and subsequently advising the oil major on the platform's expansion to cover carbon futures.
Advising ETF Securities on the launch of its equity-based Exchange-Traded Note (ETN) platform, Equity Securities Limited and advising on various aspects of its FX and precious metals platforms.
Advising the prime broker on structuring an Islamically compliant hedge fund.
Advising HANetf on the structuring, documentation and launch of The Royal Mint Physical Gold ETC, an exchange traded commodity product, backed by physical gold held in the vaults of the The Royal Mint.
Leading the team advising WisdomTree on the structuring and launch of its physically-backed Bitcoin exchange-traded product and its subsequent expansion to include an additional custodian and an Ethereum class.
Regulatory and Compliance
Advising a wide range of clients on financial services regulation, including helping clients structure their businesses to take account of changes in the regulatory environment, advising on regulatory capital requirements, and piloting applications to the FCA and other regulatory authorities.
Assisting a wide range of clients in responding to enquiries from futures exchanges and financial and energy regulators.
Advising on market abuse, insider trading, client money, anti-bribery and financial sanctions regimes
Advising an oil major on a major review of its financial regulatory compliance arrangements for its supply and trading division, including advice on risk assessment, a review of its governance and controls framework, and benchmarking its controls against relevant comparison organisations. Producing a report of our findings and reporting on these to the Board.
Advising an international oil company on the compliance arrangements for its trading division and leading the project drafting a comprehensive compliance manual (including sections on sanctions and AML), producing online training and delivering in-person training.
Advising on wide range of regulatory and compliance issues relating to EMIR, REMIT, MAR, the Benchmark Regulation and SFTR.
Advising mutual insurance companies on Solvency II, credit risk mitigation, Brexit and related issues.
Advising on major outsourcing arrangements related to financial markets, including advice on regulatory requirements relating to outsourcing
Advising on payment services, retail banking products and consumer credit
Advising on credit risk mitigation, including giving advice and legal opinions on close-out netting and collateralisation, as well as advising on guarantees, security structures and letters of credit.
Digital Assets
Advising on financial regulatory and related issues associated with the launch of Sandbox, an innovative crypto news and analysis site.
Advising Fasanara Capital on a first of its kind private credit tokenisation pool on the Celo blockchain between Fasanara Capital, an institutional asset manager active in the digital asset space, and Untangled Finance, a real-world asset decentralised finance protocol.
Advising several clients on the tokenisation of treasury bills and other real-world assets.
Advising several clients on bespoke and ISDA-based documentation for digital asset derivatives.
Advising an international stablecoin issuer on a wide range of UK financial regulatory issues and questions.
Advising an international bank specializing in digital assets on the activities it may carry on in the UK.
Advising on the establishment of a proposed digital trading platform for trading in gold with ownership interests represented in a distributed ledger.
Advising on the structuring and launch of exchange-traded products relating to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
Advising potential counterparties to tokenised commodity supply arrangements relating to metals.
Advising a wide variety of market participants on UK regulation including advice on the financial promotion regime, AML regime and general prohibition.
Advising on the UK regulatory classification of a wide range of digital assets.
Advising a digital assets broker on a successful application to become a registered cryptoasset exchange provider under the UK Money Laundering Regulations.
Financial Sanctions
Assisting a wide range of clients with their compliance arrangements for financial sanctions, including advising on the sanctions aspects of specific transactions, drafting sanctions clauses, advising on the interplay on sanctions and the EU Blocking Regulation and related UK regulations, and drafting sanctions policies and procedures.
Advising a syndicate of lenders on compliance issues relating to the proposed takeover of the borrower by entities with connections to sanctioned persons.
Recognitions
- Selected through peer review for inclusion in The Best Lawyers™ in the United Kingdom for Derivatives, 2024-2025
Ranked in Chambers UK for UK-wide Commodities: Derivatives & Energy Trading, 2014-2026
- Chambers UK, 2022 comments that Brett has “an excellent knowledge of the subject and is very strong in his analysis”
Credentials
Education
Education
- College of Law
- University of Warwick
Professional admissions & qualifications
Professional admissions & qualifications
- England and Wales
Professional affiliations
Professional affiliations
- Brett is an active participant in FIA Europe and a member of its Energy and Emissions Working Group. He advises the Legal Committee of the European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) and also supports the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and the International Energy Credit Association (IECA).
News
1 / 10
Insights
Blogs
1 / 17
Events
1 / 4