With 20 years of international legal experience, Paul provides counsel to clients in relation to their most complex and challenging IT and digital transformation programs.      

As Co-Chair of DLA Piper’s Global Technology & Sourcing practice, Paul is committed to supporting clients to achieve their organizational objectives. Paul is also a member of DLA Piper’s Change Council which is responsible for fostering radical change and innovation at the firm, and building on the firm’s recognition by the FT as one of the world’s top 10 firms for innovation.       

In recognition of this work, Paul and his team are ranked Band 1 in both leading legal directories, Chambers Global and Legal 500.   

Paul completed his INSEAD Executive MBA in December 2019 (on the Dean’s List with Distinction), with a focus on the design and implementation of strategies and new business models that leverage new and emerging technologies to provide a superior sustainable competitive advantage.  

Joe Bauerschmidt has 29 years of capital markets and M&A experience, spanning more than 400 deals and successfully raising USD70 billion. His principal focus has been on securities offerings, liability management and restructurings in the public and private capital markets representing leading international investment banks as well as corporate issuers. Joe has completed a large number of Venture Capital/ mid-size Private Equity deals with an emphasis on Fintech and technology-driven disruptive businesses.

Joe's work in Singapore includes IPOs, SPACs, and other offerings for Temasek, CapitaCommercial Trust, K-REIT, Starhill Global REIT, Pacific Internet, OCBC, SATS, SIAEC, UTAC, ARA, and Abbey National and proposed offerings for Singapore Power, Samudra Energy, ECnet, BexCom, First Shipping Lease Trust and Catcha.com.

He has been engaged in Indonesian transactions since 1992, advising companies such as PT Berau Coal Energy Tbk, PT Antam, PT Karyadibya Mahardika, PT Freeport Indonesia, PT Bukit Makmur Mandiri Utama (BUMA), PT Pertamina (Persero), PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk, Niko Resources Indonesia, PT Yudistira Bumi Energi, PT Bumi Serpong Damai Tbk, PT Ciliandra Perkasa, PT Alam Sutera, PT Medco Energi International and PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP).

Joe has advised issuers and underwriters in structuring, negotiating and restructuring high yield bonds, IPOs and SPACs throughout Asia in Indonesia, China, Macau, Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Vietnam as well as in Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. He represented the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka on its maiden sovereign bond offering, Finance Asia's bond deal of the year for 2007.

Shane Bilardi is experienced in M&A, joint ventures and equity raisings for public and private companies with a particular focus on takeovers and schemes of arrangement.

He also has experience in the Corporations Act, the ASX Listing Rules and Takeovers Panel proceedings, being involved in a number of Takeover Panel applications.

Shane is predominantly active in the food and agribusiness sectors as well as advising many industry leading clients in the energy, technology, consumer goods and life science and healthcare markets.

Nathan (Nate) Bush advises clients in internal investigations, government enforcement actions, and compliance matters in Asia. He was based in Beijing from 2004 through 2012, and has covered Asia from Singapore since 2013. Nate pioneered antitrust practice in China, and guides clients through anti-bribery and anticorruption (ABAC) risks in Asia's dynamic markets.

Investigations and Compliance: Nate represents companies and individuals in internal investigations and enforcement actions involving violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other ABAC laws, as well as securities fraud, market misconduct, money laundering, and fraud offenses. He has conducted internal investigations throughout China and Southeast Asia. He advises on compliance program implementation and dawn raids, and compliance aspects of M&A and capital markets transactions.

Antitrust and Competition: Nate advises on antitrust merger notifications, compliance strategies, and enforcement risks under Asia’s evolving competition regimes. He leads innovative multi-jurisdictional approaches to antitrust regulatory inquiries, litigation, and policy advocacy, and represents clients in US merger review and antitrust litigation matters.

Trade, Sanctions, and Export Controls: Nate counsels clients on compliance with economic sanctions and export controls. He has advised clients on US and Chinese trade remedy proceedings, and in a successful WTO challenge to Chinese market access restrictions in the media sector.

He has served as co-chair of Legal and IP Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore (2017-2019) and as Legal Committee Chairman (2008) and General Counsel (2009-2011) of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

Lauren Hurcombe focuses her practice on advising multinational clients on the negotiation of complex technology transactions and commercial outsourcing arrangements as well as associated data protection issues, in particular for clients in regulated markets.

She also has a particular experience in the telecoms sector advising on both commercial and regulatory matters, including mobile network sharing arrangements to roll out new technologies, and IT and telecoms licensing requirements.

In addition, Lauren regularly advises international businesses on best practice approach to regional and international data privacy and cyber security matters, including the development and full-scale implementation of data protection compliance programmes from both a GDPR and APAC perspective.

Anthony Lloyd practices in the areas of technology, commercial contracts, outsourcing and strategic sourcing. He has led teams advising on multinational projects across Asia, the US and Europe primarily for international corporations acquiring technology and telecommunications systems but also for technology and telecommunications suppliers, providing him with a strong understanding of the commercial drivers for both sides.

His philosophy embraces a holistic approach to meeting clients’ technology needs by leading a team that provides clients with a complete solution to the development and execution of IT strategies, from a legal and commercial perspective.

This provides clients with an end-to-end multi-disciplinary solution to achieve desired outcomes in complex technology transactions – with reduced risk, increased efficiency and simplified execution. Clients value business critical knowledge in benchmarking, strategic sourcing, negotiation support, transition management and ongoing supplier management.

His clients include companies in a range of sectors including telecommunications, aviation, banking and finance, energy and resources, government and insurance.

Mark O'Conor is experienced in all aspects of IT law, majoring on cloud and digital transformation, public procurement and outsourcing.

Mark has been ranked as an "expert" since 2002 and recent Chambers and Legal 500 entries include "maintains excellent client relationships", "first class legal acumen", "excellent IT knowledge" and the Who's Who of international IT lawyers describes Mark as "outstanding".

Mark has previously been the UK Managing Partner of DLA Piper and is currently the Chair of the Society for Computers and Law and of DLA Piper's London Client Group.

Mark advises companies and governments on digital transformation, agile development, open source, AI and cloud computing legal challenges and has been involved in drafting and negotiating cloud computing contracts both on the provider and the customer side.

Mark provided legal and procurement advice to the Cabinet Office and OGC in its work to establish the "G-Cloud" as part of the public sector ICT strategy to meet the objectives of the Digital Britain report.

Specifically, Mark has sought to aid the UK public sector, and subsequently cloud vendors and large corporate customers find consensus and complete larger deals. He established an independent cloud forum, bringing together like minded experts from vendor organisations such as Colt, Dell, Salesforce, Agilisys, Skyscape Cloud, Memset and Microsoft. Customers involved have included the Cabinet Office and various regulators.

Mark is DLA Piper's client partner for its relationships with British Airways, Vodafone, LEGO and KPMG. Mark is also legal advisor to clients including National Grid, Close Brothers and the MOD.

Joscha Schmitz is Head of Energy & Climate for APJ hyperscale data centre specialist, AirTrunk. In this role, Joscha leads the company’s energy, carbon and water strategy, developing initiatives to position AirTrunk as a leader in sustainability and efficiency. Joscha played a critical role in the development of AirTrunk’s net zero strategy and the company’s renewable energy projects.

Prior to AirTrunk, Joscha was general manager for Aggreko, an energy service business operating across seven APAC markets, and provided energy advisory at Baringa Partners in the UK. Joscha is based in Singapore.

As an advocate of open source movements, Wan Wei founded IKIGUIDE Metaverse Collective (IMC), an entity with a mission to help 10million people crossover to the Web3.0 space.

IMC counts NYSE-listed Nutanix, Philips, Hitachi, DBS, Crypto.com and non-profit alliance ChangemakersXchange as some of the key clients and partners in its portfolio. She is also guest-trainer at Singapore Management University Academy and Aventis Graduate School.

Wan Wei is also one of the founding team members of the dWeb Southeast Asian node and the Metaverse for All: Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity Movement.

Gareth Stokes focuses on AI, information technology, strategic sourcing and intellectual property-driven transactions. Gareth is part of the leadership team for DLA Piper’s global AI Practice Group.

He enjoys nothing more than advising on cutting edge technology transactions. This includes the design and training of AI models, collection and use of data, and the increasing array of specialist hardware available to run these AIs more efficiently. 

In a ubiquitously connected world, technology issues are more often global rather than local, and the largest projects tend to involve innovative contractual structures. Gareth has extensive experience with complex contracting, including joint venture arrangements, multi-level framework and call off structures, trust arrangements and other multi-contract arrangements.

Kristi Swartz is an experienced fintech lawyer and has been instrumental in developing Hong Kong’s fintech ecosystem. She advises clients on an array of matters including structuring, licensing and corporate governance. She also provides advice in respect to regulation and licensing requirements for digital assets, stablecoins, payments and alternative payments, developing equity crowdfunding platforms, robo advisory apps and the structuring, set-up and running of compliant crypto-exchanges to name just a few.

Scott Thiel is the founder and entrepreneur-in-residence of TOKO, an enterprise-grade tokenisation engine and digital asset management platform. Scott advises clients around the world on all aspects of tokenisation and its application in digital capital markets; and was responsible for helping TOKO to structure the first debt tokenisation transaction in Asia.

Scott was formerly Asia Head of DLA Piper’s Global Technology and FinTech sector initiative; and was a leader within DLA Piper’s recently launched “Blockchain and Digital Assets” practice group. He is also the firm’s representative on the Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council – a next generation public distributed ledger technology (DLT) infrastructure through which DLA Piper is hosting a node. Scott is also a non-executive director of the Blockchain Think Lab, Hedera Hashgraph, and the HBAR Foundation.

In March 2022, Scott supported DLA Piper with TOKO service offerings and has successfully helped to secure the appointment as the exclusive legal service provider for the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), an authority that is linked to the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority (DWTCA) and responsible for licensing and regulating the sector across Dubai's mainland and the free zone territories.

For their work on TOKO, Scott and DLA Piper have been the recipient of industry awards and recognition, including:

• Scott Thiel ranked by Chambers & Partners Fintech Guide 2022 (Band 2)
• Scott Thiel ranked by Chambers & Partners, TMT, Greater China Region 2022 (Band 1)
• DLA Piper ranked by The Legal 500, TMT, Hong Kong 2022 (Tier 2)
• Scott Thiel recognised as a “Leading Individual for TMT”, The Legal 500, Hong Kong 2022
• DLA Piper ranked by The Legal 500, Fintech, China (Foreign Firms) 2022 (Tier 2)
• DLA Piper recognised as “Most Innovative Lawyers”, Financial Times, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022