On the 5 October 2021, our fifth DLA Piper European Technology Summit brought together business leaders from the European tech industry alongside key figures who are currently shaping the regulatory and financial landscape. The full day's programme for this virtual event covered some of the key issues impacting enterprise in the context of emerging technology, innovation and the pursuit of growth.
Throughout the day we were delighted to have eminent industry leaders joining us as keynote speakers and panellists to share their insights.
The Summit was attended by senior executives from across Europe’s, and indeed the world’s, technology, media and telecommunications industries as well as the financial services, retail, manufacturing and other industries looking to grasp opportunities and manage risks arising from digital transformation, plus private equity and venture capital organisations, entrepreneurs and investors from digital start-ups and local and regional regulators.
To keep up to date with the latest DLA Piper Tech Sector news and thought leadership activity, follow our social media channels: LinkedIn and Twitter, while our Technology’s Legal Edge blog offers you our latest insights on the legal developments affecting the technology sector.
Please click on speaker thumbnails below to view bios.
Sam Zell is the Chairman of Equity Group Investments (EGI), the private investment firm he founded more than 40 years ago. The firm's investments span industries and continents and include interests in finance, energy, transportation, communications, health care and real estate. Mr. Zell is recognized as a founding father of today's public real estate industry after creating three of the largest REITs in history.
He is also Founder and Chairman of Equity International, a private investment firm focused on building real estate-related businesses in international emerging markets. Mr. Zell has been particularly active in bringing Equity International's companies to the public markets.
Three of these investments are listed on the New York Stock Exchange: Gafisa, a leading homebuilder in Brazil; Xinyuan, a fast-growing regional homebuilder in China; and Homex, Mexico's leading homebuilder. A fourth, BR Malls, Brazil's largest retail property owner and operator, is listed on the Bovespa.
Hannah Fry
Professor in the Mathematics of Cities
University College London
Mathematician and broadcaster
Hannah Fry is a mathematician and broadcaster. She is a senior lecturer in the Mathematics of Cities at University College London. As well as her academic work she is a regular presenter of science and maths programmes on BBC TV and radio, including Contagion!, a prescient look at how diseases spread and pandemics happen.
Having specialised in fluid dynamics, Hannah worked briefly in Formula 1 aerodynamics before returning to academia. At UCL she works with physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, architects and geographers to study the patterns in human behaviour. Specifically she looks at urban environments and human activity from shopping habits to transport use to riots. These patterns of activity have also been applied to how diseases spread through day-to-day contact. Beyond life in a city, she also considers the maths of the everyday; how numbers and formulae can explain behaviours, predict events, and reveal the truth behind commonly held myths.
Hannah examines the incredible insights data can provide, but also where its limitations are. Sometimes an over-reliance on data, or the wrong sort of data, can be as harmful as ignoring the data altogether. She highlights the biases within data and how the tools used to collect and interpret it can often betray very human prejudices. All of this also requires an appreciation of uncertainty and change. Using data to predict the future can only go so far in a messy, uncertain world and Hannah reflects on risk, probability and decision-making. Equally, she looks at how a lack of care in collecting or understanding data can not just embed biases but even amplify them, excluding and discriminating against groups, and having a damaging impact on fairness, diversity and inclusion.
Connecting many of these key issues is artificial intelligence. Hannah also examines how AI is revealing incredible new insights and developing more effective processes, but also considers its often overlooked shortcomings and unjustified hype. Looking at the realities of the revolutionary ideas behind AI she considers the controversies, ethical considerations, and the scare-stories, as she does in her book Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine. On television, Hannah has explored Climate Change By Numbers, recounted the story of computing pioneer Ada Lovelace in Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing, and looked at how a million people at any point in time are travelling by plane in City in the Sky. She’s co-hosted BBC Four’s Trainspotting Live, and The Joy of Data, as well as asking the public to download the BBC’s Pandemic app to reveal how a flu-like disease could spread. On radio, she’s appeared on Computing Britain, Can Maths Combat Terrorism, on the Radio 1 show Music by Numbers, and co-hosts (with geneticist Adam Rutherford) Radio 4’s The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry.
Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer for Google [X], a serial entrepreneur, author of Solve for Happy, and founder of One Billion Happy.
Mo has an impressive combined career of 27 years, starting at IBM Egypt as a Systems Engineer before moving to a sales role in the government sector. Venturing in to the UAE, Mo joined NCR Abu Dhabi to cover the non-finance sector. He then became acquainted with the consumer goods industry as Regional Manager of BAT. At Microsoft he assumed various roles over a span of seven and a half years, in his last role at Microsoft he headed the Communications Sector across Emerging Markets worldwide.
Mo joined Google in 2007 to kick-start its business in Emerging Markets. He is fascinated by the role that technology plays in empowering people in emerging communities and has dedicated years of his career towards that passion. Over a period of 6 years, Mo started close to half of Google’s operations worldwide.
In 2013 he moved to Google’s infamous innovation arm, Google [X] where he led the business strategy, planning, sales, business development and partnerships. [X] does not attempt to achieve incremental improvements in the way the world works, but instead, it tries to develop new technologies that will reinvent the way things are and deliver a radical, ten fold—10X—improvement. This leads to seemingly SciFi ideas such as: Project Loon, which aims to use high-altitude balloons to provide affordable internet access to the 5 billion people on every square inch of our planet, Project Makani, aiming to revolutionize wind energy generation using autonomous carbon fiber kites as well as Self driving cars, Google Life Sciences, and many more. The business team under Mo’s leadership has designed innovative business models analogous to the disruptive technologies [X] creates, and has created deep partnerships and global deals that enabled [X] to thrive and build products fit for the real world.
Alongside his career, Mo remained a serial entrepreneur who has cofounded more than 20 businesses in fields such as health and fitness, food and beverage and real estate. He served as a board member in several technology, health and fitness and consumer goods companies as well as several government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He mentors tens of start-ups at any point in time. In 2019, Mo co-founded T0day, an ambitious project that aims to reinvent consumerism for the benefit of consumers, retailers and our planet. In 2020, Mo launched his successful podcast, Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat, in which he conducts interviews that explore the extraordinary lives of everyday people.
Mo Gawdat is the author of “Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy” (2017). Through his 12 year research on the topic of happiness, he created an algorithm and a repeatable well engineered model to reach a state of uninterrupted happiness regardless of the circumstances of life. Mo’s happiness model proved highly effective. And, in 2014, was put to the ultimate test when Mo lost his son Ali to preventable medical error during a simple surgical procedure. Solve for Happy is the pillar for a mission Mo has committed to as his personal moonshot, a mission to deliver his happiness message to one billion people around the world (#onebillionhappy).
Martin specialises in structured credit and asset management acting for many of the world's leading private equity credit funds, banks and corporations, on complex funding structures, portfolio sales, securitization, derivative products and technology investment. He has over 25 years' experience working for and advising funds and financial institutions.
Leading a team of over 700 lawyers in more than 90 offices worldwide. The group provides advice on tax efficient structuring, vehicle formation and management, regulatory issues, vehicle funding and lending, asset acquisition and disposal including NPLs and consumer assets, capital markets listings and reporting, and asset management including portfolio repackaging and trading.
Martin is recognised as one of the world's leading FinTech lawyers (ranked in Legal 500) and advises on technology solutions for emerging and traditional funding structures. He is at the forefront of alternative investment strategies and products including applying new techniques through platform structures, digitalization and fund driven investment.
David Bell is a Director at Hampleton Partners and is based in London, UK. He has over 15 years’ experience providing investment banking advice to technology companies and entrepreneurs, including M&A, minority sale and fundraising transactions. David is also a qualified lawyer, enabling him to bring to his clients a rare combination of world class legal and financial expertise. Since 2012, David has advised and invested in a range of technology and tech-enabled companies in the UK and internationally. He has advised on a broad range of established and nascent technology transactions, including enterprise and industrial software, health and medical technology, deep tech (Cyber, IoT, AI) marketing and tech-enabled services.
Most recently, he advised on the sale of Thoughtonomy (Intelligent Automation) to Blue Prism, and Dictate.IT (cognitive neural network powered medical speech recognition) to Clanwilliam, as well as funding rounds for two growth technology companies in financial intelligence and cloud services.
David qualified as a lawyer at Linklaters where he practised for five years before his transition into investment banking. He spent his formative years in corporate finance at Goldman Sachs and Evercore Partners, before moving to advise technology companies, investors, and entrepreneurs in the mid-market.
David holds an MSci and BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, is a qualified non-practising lawyer and obtained a PGdL and LPC from Nottingham Law School. He lives in London with his better half, consultant head of neuroradiology at a leading London hospital; makes a weekly attempt to train his son's football team; is an amateur sailor; and where possible, travels extensively – the DPRK (North Korea) being particularly “memorable”.
Daphne Bens, head of the Dutch Corporate group, has over 20 years’ experience in advising (multi)national corporations as well as listed companies in complex cross border M&A transactions. Daphne's practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, private equity, joint ventures and general corporate law.
Daphne has a specific focus on the Technology sector and the Hospitality and Leisure sector and is member of the DLA Piper core teams in these sectors. She has also been a member of the jury of the Philips Innovation Awards in recent years.
In 2002 Daphne was seconded at DLA Piper Hong Kong and Singapore.
David Bicknell has over 30 years’ experience in writing about and analysing the technology sector, both from the vendor and the user perspective, both in the UK and the US. His career in technology journalism and analysis has included detailed research into IT projects and he has co-authored a book, ‘Crash’, which explored why and how IT projects go wrong. He has also co-authored a novel on the life of computer pioneer Charles Babbage. Prior to joining Thematic Research, David spent six years editing a GlobalData title exploring the use of technology in the UK public sector. He has previously worked for a news agency and for the BBC.
Anja Blumert is the Chief Financial Officer of Global Cloud Xchange, responsible for global finance organization and financial activities, based in London.
Ms. Blumert has 20 years of experience in finance, with a focus on TMT and emerging markets. Ms. Blumert previously served as Head of M&A and portfolio management at Millicom International Cellular SA, TMT investment professional at Warburg Pincus International LLC, and as an investment banker with UBS. Anja is currently a board member of Axian Telecom and most recently served on the board of GCX, BIMA, and Helios Towers Ltd.
Kit Burden has extensive experience in the areas of outsourcing and complex technology transactions, advising both users and suppliers of IT, commercial and outsourcing services and in relation to all aspects of the procurement process.
Kit's work ordinarily involves him on business critical projects frequently valued in the hundreds of millions of pounds.
His clients include major retail banks, airlines, high street and online retailers, pharmaceutical companies, investment banks, outsource and IT service providers, and various name brand and multinational companies.
Chris Carmody
Senior Vice President, Technology Shared Services, UPMC
President, ClinicalConnect Health Information Exchange (CCHIE)
Since joining the organization 23 years ago, Chris has served in various information technology roles. In his current position, Chris manages an annual budget of over USD300 million and leads approximatley 1,200 IT professionals across numerous information technology infrastructure teams, Hospital based technology support and corporate applications. Additionally, Chris is the president and a founding member of ClinicalConnect, Pennsylvania’s largest health information exchange (HIE). The organization serves over 5 million patients located in western and central Pennsylvania by securely connecting their vital medical information with clinicians, wherever and whenever it’s needed.
Chris has a bachelor’s degree in accounting with a minor in business administration from Westminster College, where he currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees. He also has a Master of Business Administration and Master of Information Systems Management from Robert Morris University. In 2015, The Pittsburgh Technology Council and Greater Pittsburgh CIO Group named Chris Pittsburgh CIO of the Year.
Rubayet is an experienced lawyer advising on high-profile energy and infrastructure projects globally. Whilst he has substantial experience of advising on project finance, PPP transactions in a range of sectors, he currently focuses on the development, financing and acquisition of renewable energy, energy efficiency and infrastructure projects which involve cutting-edge technology.
He primarily advises a range of clients including lenders, investors and government bodies in respect of key project documentation (EPC, O&Ms and services agreements) but also focuses on advising on investment and governance arrangements particularly on complex joint ventures.
He works closely with clients throughout the lifecycle of a project from any bidding / acquisition through to completion and financial close and throughout the operational period and then onto any disposal. Rubayet is a key member of the firm's Renewable Energy, Digital Infrastructure, Insurance Asset Management, ESG and Sustainability sector initiatives.
Andrew Collinge is an Advisor at the Dubai Data Establishment, part of Smart Dubai, the government entity responsible for the digital transformation of Dubai. Andrew has spent the last decade working in establishing city-wide data ecosystems in two major cities – London and Dubai. In Dubai he is responsible, amongst other things, for the Smart Dubai Ethical AI Toolkit and the city’s Ethical AI Advisory Board. In London, he led the city’s pioneering open data programme and established City Hall’s first Smart Cities team. For the G20 Smart Cities Global Alliance, he recently led and published a model Open Data Policy for all cities to use in the pursuit of responsible urban technology governance.
Stelios heads Synopsys’ Autonomous Design program and is a founder and director of the Machine Learning Center of Excellence, where he looks at applying machine learning (ML) technology to key disruptions in the design and manufacturing of integrated computational systems. He has more than 20 years of experience in chip design and EDA software, and has founded two companies in this space. Stelios holds a B.Eng. Computer Engineering from the University of Kent, UK, and an M.S. Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, California.
Sylvia Ebersberger advises German and international corporate clients on all aspects of commercial matters including comprehensive cross-border projects and strategic co-operations. She focuses in particular on the support of transformation processes and innovation based projects and accompanies data-driven business models on a regular basis.
Given her long-term and continuous consulting for clients in the automotive industry, she has specific expertise in the automotive sector and is very familiar with the key issues along the entire value chain. Her advice ranges from drafting and negotiation of commercial contracts within the framework of development and manufacturing co-operations to supplier management and the optimization of processes and product portfolios on the basis of intensive usage of data.
Sylvia is recommended by JUVE Rechtsmarkt as one of the "Top 40 under 40" lawyers across law firms, industry and the judiciary in Germany, because "with her specialization the Munich based lawyer hits the nerve of the times".
Sylvia is head of DLA Piper’s international Sub Group Automotive.
Simon is European Area Vice President, Sales at CyrusOne, responsible for client engagement across the region and delivering the very best in data center excellence to customers.
With over 25 years’ experience in commercial real estate, Simon has lead teams in both the corporate and service provider environments and brings a unique perspective to his role supporting clients on their data center requirements.
Prior to joining CyrusOne Simon lead the EMEA Corporate Solutions division at Colliers International. During his time there Simon was instrumental in building up the profile and service capability of the team and growing the business by over 100% within 2 years. He advised clients on a range of projects, from leased acquisition of technical and traditional space, to M&A Consulting, and sale and leaseback of owned technical facilities to specialist Data Centre Funds.
Simon has worked within Global organisations for most of his career, holding senior client side roles at corporations including MFS, Worldcom, Level(3), and Avaya. He also has over 12 years of Global Account Executive experience during his time at CBRE advising clients such as Nokia, SAP, BT, and Lexmark. He has been fortunate to live abroad in this time and as a result has strong cultural awareness that enables him to successfully bring complex projects over the line.
Luca Gori advises clients on a broad range of corporate transactions for corporate venture house, venture capital houses, private equity houses and emerging growth companies.
Luca's significant experience includes acting on private equity acquisitions and disposals both in the UK and cross border, pre-IPO investment and venture capital investment for institutional and strategic investors in fields ranging from clean tech, oil and gas, and high tech companies.
Dan is the Head of Engagement at Legatics, an intuitive legal transaction management platform that simplifies and automates traditional legal processes. Dan is responsible for overseeing relationships with existing customers and driving adoption of the platform.
Dan trained and qualified as an associate at Hogan Lovells for 5 years, working in the Private Equity/M&A team. Prior to joining Legatics he completed an MBA at Cambridge University Judge Business School, with his final research paper focusing on barriers to the practical adoption of LegalTech solutions in law firms, and is passionate about law firm innovation and change.
Sunita Grote leads the Ventures team within UNICEF’s Office of Innovation and co-founded its Venture Fund. UNICEF Ventures explores how emerging frontier technology can accelerate results for the most marginalized children, including through investments in open source solutions from emerging markets. She steers UNICEF's co-leadership of the Digital Public Goods Alliance, a network of partners who collectively contribute to the discovery, development, and deployment of open source digital public goods. Sunita has a background in innovative financing and previously spent 10 years working in the global HIV and health response based mostly in the UK and in South Asia. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and lives in NYC with her partner and daughter.
Tom Hambrett is the group's General Counsel and Company Secretary. He joined Revolut in 2017 and is responsible for defining and executing the group's global legal and regulatory strategy. This includes the structuring of investments, navigating complex regulatory environments in multiple markets, working with domestic and international policymakers to facilitate innovation in financial services and establishing an award winning global legal operations function. Before joining Revolut, Tom was at Herbert Smith Freehills, where he advised clients on a wide range of corporate and securities law matters. Tom received a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from Macquarie University, Australia.
Pascal is the Head of Legal for Digital & IT Roche Diabetes Care. He has 14 years of experience in advising on medical device, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry topics, including leading complex negotiations and litigations. His current focus is on digital products (software development, platform agreements, global product launches, privacy assessments etc.) from a global legal perspective.
Hossein did his Ph.D at Stanford. He was at JP Morgan with the portfolio credit risk analytics team. Following that he has been with 5 start ups with highly successful exits, including Funding Circle (LON: FCH), a leading Fintech platform, an AI based credit risk modelling platform, a specialized platform for large scale statistical computation, and a big data analytics recommendation engine. He is a co-founder at Luther Systems, a distributed automation platform for complex enterprise processes in the Deep Process Automation space.
Michael is a serial entrepreneur, before co-founding Carbon13 – the venture builder for the climate emergency, he built Poq, a USD10 million revenue SaaS platform for mobile shopping apps based in London and New York, for which Michael raised USD20 million+ in investment. Michael is a judge & mentor at TechNation’s NetZero program, as well as Digital Catapult for Climate.
Jeroen started his career as real estate developer at Ballast Nedam and started at Troostwijk in 2001 to set up the Capital Markets service line. In 2007, Jeroen joined the Capital Markets team of Cushman & Wakefield in the Netherlands where is was appointed Head of Netherlands in 2012. He continued this role after the acquisition of DTZ Zadelhoff in the Netherlands in November 2016. Jeroen is member of the EMEA Strategic Leadership team.
Jeroen has over twenty years’ experience in real estate having dealt with many (international) clients investing in retail, offices and logistic property throughout the Netherlands.
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.
Kaveh Safavi, M.D., J.D., is a senior managing director at Accenture where he is responsible for leading, developing and driving a growth strategy that differentiates Accenture’s offerings for providers, health insurers, and public and private health systems across the globe.
A seasoned executive, Dr. Safavi brings more than three decades of leadership experience to Accenture Health. Prior to joining Accenture in 2011, Dr. Safavi led Cisco’s global healthcare practice. Before that he was chief medical officer of Thomson Reuters’ health business, vice president of medical affairs at United Healthcare, and had leadership roles at HealthSpring and Humana. Among his many accomplishments was establishing one of the Midwest’s first electronic-health-record-enabled primary care practices.
Dr. Safavi has published numerous papers and is often quoted on healthcare issues in various media publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, The New York Times, Consumer Reports, US News and World Report, Harvard Business Review and The Economist. Recently, IT Services Report named him the #1 healthcare IT executive for 2020.
Dr. Safavi earned an M.D. from Loyola University School of Medicine and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. He is board-certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and completed his medical residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He is an adjunct lecturer of Health Enterprise Management at Kellogg School of Management-Northwestern University. He also serves on the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ Board of Visitors–Northwestern University, is a frequent guest scholar at the Stanford University Clinical Excellence Research Center and serves on the advisory committee of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
Dr. Safavi is a lifelong Chicagoan.
Dr. Klaus Schartel is General Counsel of TRATON SE, a stock listed company located in Munich and leading commercial vehicle manufacturer worldwide with its brands MAN, Scania, VW Caminhões e Ônibus, Navistar and RIO. He has almost 30 years of experience in the Automotive industry and advising on a broad range of relevant legal aspects, including Corporate, M&A, e-Mobility, autonomous driving, mobility services and related new business models.
Before joining TRATON in 2018, Klaus hold various management positions at Daimler AG within its Legal departments and other business units. As Associate General Counsel he lead the M&A and Cooperations team and was responsible for leading and coordinating the global strategy for all non-technical aspects of autonomus driving, including Legal, Certification, Ethics and Data Privacy.
Folake Shasanya is the Head of EMEA Warehouse Financing in SVB’s UK Branch and joined in July 2019 to establish this new high growth business area for the bank.
A 15 year veteran in structured finance, Folake previously led acquisition financing at Royal Bank of Scotland providing funding solutions to non-bank lenders and private equity firms. She was also director of the credit division at SIFMA helping to shape regulatory and market structures in the fall out of the Global Financial Crisis. She began her finance career in 2005 as a structurer in the asset backed financing group at Credit Suisse, having joined under a special winter internship program and never looked back.
Folake is deeply passionate about propelling small businesses for under-represented minorities across the African diaspora. She is an advisor board member for Little Tigers Football Club, and Investment Eight, an initiative to dispel the fears around finance and encourage women in Africa into investing.
Folake earned a BEng Hons in Computer Systems Engineering and a postgraduate in Financial Mathematics at Cass Business School, London.
Jan F. Sieper
Director Strategy and Transactions | Automotive & Mobility
EY Strategy and Transactions
Jan is a Director in EY’s Strategy and Transaction practice, focusing on Automotive Strategy and New Mobility. He has over 15 years Automotive industry and consulting experience and advises international clients – OEMs, Suppliers and technology companies – on digital and sales transformation programs, new business models, platform and ecosystem strategies, e-Mobility, autonomous driving and mobility services.
Before joining EY in 2017, Jan hold various management positions at Daimler AG in Stuttgart. For about 3 years he led the project office to manage the day-to-day collaboration with the Independent Compliance Monitor, following a Settlement with the DOJ/SEC. As part of Daimler’s Legal M&A team, Jan drove new ways of working in the legal department with a swarm organization pilot, the concept and implementation of the corporate incubator program as well as the global strategy to tackle the non-technical challenges related to Autonomous Vehicles (Legal, Certification, Ethics, Data Privacy etc.).
Jan holds a Dipl.-Betriebswirt (BA) and Bachelor degree in International Business (University of Cooperative Education Stuttgart and Warsaw School of Economics) and is based in EY’s Hamburg office. He is married and has one son.
Gary is the Founder and CEO of FounderTribes, an innovative learning platform that empowers you to raise capital and upskill your business. Prior to FounderTribes, he served as CEO and co-founder of “The Nest”, a mobile app that could be called “Masterclass for founders.” He is the former CEO of Wayra UK, a corporate accelerator backed by Telefonica (O2), where he invested in 185 start-ups that raised $265m and were valued at more than $1bn.
From 2010-2014, Gary was an associate professor at entrepreneurship at IE Business School in Madrid in addition to being the CEO of Wayra Spain. He launched his first start-up in 2005, which was a property search engine that raised $4m before eventually being acquired by a publicly listed company. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Gary worked as a lawyer in NY, London, Madrid and Barcelona. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College and was the executive editor of The Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School. He is a Governor of the University of East London and has been twice on the Power List of the most influential black people in the UK.
Gareth Stokes focuses on information technology, outsourcing and intellectual property-driven contracts.
Gareth's experience spans numerous complex major procurement and sourcing projects within heavily regulated industries. Most such engagements involve elements of service delivery on-shore, with other elements delivered further afield, whether near shore within the newer EU Member States or offshore in India, China and emerging economies. These projects tend to involve innovative contractual structures, including joint venture arrangements, multi-level framework and call off structures, trust arrangements and other multi-contract arrangements.
Angelique Strong Marks serves as General Counsel & Corporate Secretary. Before joining REE Automotive, she served as Director, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Compliance Officer for MAHLE Gmbh’s North American operations. She served in the role at MAHLE after MAHLE acquired Behr America, Inc., where she served as Director, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Compliance Officer. In both positions, she was responsible for legal operations, including corporate governance, contracts, compliance, commercial transactions, employment, intellectual property, litigation, mergers and acquisitions. She has also held several senior-level positions including Vice President, General Counsel & Assistant Corporate Secretary at Handleman Company, an international distribution company and Chief Legal Officer & Assistant Secretary at Frank’s Nursery & Craft, Inc., which was then the largest lawn & garden retail operation in the United States. She also held senior-level corporate securities and corporate governance positions at Fortune 500 companies, DTE Energy Company and CMS Energy Corporation. She began her legal career representing General Motors Corporation and Delphi Corporation in employment and labor matters.
She has had several distinguished legal leadership positions, including serving on the State Bar Michigan Commissioners, American Bar Association House of Delegates, Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly Board of Editors. She has also been honored by Crain’s Business Detroit first as 40 in their 40’s and then in the inaugural class of Notable Women in the Law. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Akron, her Master of Business Administration with a dual concentration in Finance and Management from Miami University, and her Juris Doctor from the Ohio State University College of Law.
She enjoys running and outdoor adventures. In 2016, she completed the Mt. Kilimanjaro Triathlon, which included her reaching Mt. Kilimanjaro’s summit, completing a 28-meter Bike race and completing a marathon over six days. She is also actively engaged in community service projects. She is the proud mother of two loving high school daughters, Amari and Jalia. In 2017, she completed the Tough Mudder.
Richard Susskind
President, Society for Computers and Law; Chair of the Advisory Board
Oxford Internet Institute
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is the world’s most cited author on the future of legal services. He is President of the Society for Computers and Law, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute, the Founder of Remote Courts Worldwide, and, since 1998, has been Technology Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Richard’s work has been translated into 18 languages and he has been invited to speak in over 60 countries. He has written numerous books, including The Future of the Law (1996), Transforming the Law (2000), The End of Lawyers? (2008), The Future of the Professions (2015, with D Susskind) Tomorrow’s Lawyers (2013, 2017), and Online Courts and the Future of Justice (2019). Richard is an independent adviser to international professional firms and national governments. In the 1980s, he wrote his doctorate on artificial intelligence and the law at Balliol College, Oxford. He holds professorships at Oxford University, UCL, Gresham College, and Strathclyde University.
Fiona van Echelpoel
Deputy Director General in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments (DG-MIP)
European Central Bank
Fiona van Echelpoel is Deputy Director General in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments (DG-MIP) of the ECB since January 2018. She has a broad background in central banking, having worked in a number of functions in the market infrastructure and market operations areas of the ECB since its establishment in 1998 and previously for its forerunner the European Monetary Institute (EMI); prior to that she worked at the Central Bank of Ireland. She represents the ECB in various European and international fora and chairs the ESCB CCP Working Group, co-chairs the TARGET2-Securities Cooperative Arrangement and the European Forum on the Security of Retail Payments (SecuRePay) as well as being chair of the ECB’s Internal Crypto Assets Task Force. She holds a degree in Economics and Politics from University College Dublin.
Bryony Widdup has 15 years' experience in the financial markets sector and has spent time working in-house at a major European bank as well as in private practice. Bryony has lived and worked in London and the Cayman Islands and advises on alternative credit, including structured finance, fund finance, tech-enabled finance and funding platforms.
Bryony advises a range of investment managers and sponsors on matters including secured loans, capital call facilities, hybrid facilities, asset-backed facilities, whole-fund facilities, levered/unlevered portfolio segregation and security, securitisation-structured asset backed facilities, managed account leverage arrangements, management company and GP facilities and co-invest structuring and leverage. In her work with lending institutions and alternative credit providers, she advises on lending to funds and fintechs using vanilla products and more structured solutions, including NAV-based facilities, structured note products, repurchase transactions and derivatives, as well as fund credit support matters including fund guarantee arrangements and equity commitments.
Bryony’s background combines experience in fundraising from multiple equity and debt angles, which has supported more recent expansion into fintech advisory work, in particular from an alternative credit perspective, including advising sponsors on platform based crowdfunding, advising issuers and investors on token offerings, the structuring and issuance of stablecoins and establishment of other asset-backed products including real estate backed. She is also on the Advisory Council for Global Digital Finance, working with industry and regulators on the development of industry driven codes of conduct in the digital assets market covering security tokens, stablecoin, digital assets custody, crypto funds and exchanges, amongst other topics.
Sean Williams is Chairman of G.Network UK Communications, the fibre network and internet services business in central London. Since he joined in 2018, G.Network has grown from about 5,000 premises passed with its network to about 175,000 premises. He led the board through a successful £1bn fund-raising in December 2020, to finance a plan to pass 1.3 million premises.
Until 2017, Sean was Chief Strategy Officer of BT Group and a member of its Executive Committee. He played an instrumental role in BT’s £12.5bn acquisition of EE (2014-15) and its clearance by the UK Competition & Markets Authority (2015-16); he led the negotiations with Ofcom regarding BT’s ownership and control of Openreach (2017); and he drove BT’s fibre broadband strategy (2011-2017), negotiating public subsidies with the UK government and state aid clearance with the European Commission.
Sean was formerly a member of the board of Ofcom (2003-2007), responsible for the economic and competition regulation of telecoms and broadcasting in the UK, and the board of the Office of Fair Trading (2007-08), where he was responsible for merger control and competition law enforcement. Sean has also been a non-executive director of fast-growing private companies for 20 years: in Williams Lea Group, a £1bn business services company (1991-2008), and as a founder shareholder and Senior Independent Director Nosy Crow, a £20m children’s publishing company (2010 to the present). He is also Chairman of Grain Connect, a fibre network business focus on areas outside London.
Sean has three Masters degrees, in Economics and Politics from Oxford University, Public Administration from Harvard University and Buddhist Studies from SOAS University of London, and one in Philosophy at King’s College London in progress.
Peter Wuest is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of NetApp’s International Enterprise & Commercial Field Operations. Together with his global team, he focuses on business unit and field alignment, as well as supporting our global customers on their digital transformation and cloud journey. This ensures customer and field requirements are being fed back into roadmap strategy and resources are focused to build the right team capabilities and programs.
Peter’s passion is about using data to transform industries and customer experience. The cloud opportunities are allowing disruptive innovation and all requires the right data at the right time at the right location in a secure, compliant, protected and reliable way.
Before his CTO role, Peter was NetApp’s Vice President for EMEA Cloud Infrastructure business. He was responsible for driving geo strategy and execution to help customers build cloud-architected data centers and deliver innovative cloud services in either private or service provider models.
Prior to his VP promotion in 2019, Peter was a Senior Director in charge of Cloud Infrastructure & Cloud Data Services EMEA, enabling companies to leverage uncompromised, high-class data management in the biggest public clouds in the world, and delivering easily consumable, highly automated cloud-like infrastructures with special focus on the NetApp HCI flagship technology. He also held various other roles focused on technology innovation and setting the right strategy in the field.
Peter joined NetApp in 2001 as Systems Engineer. From there he went on to lead the company’s technical sales team in Germany and build an in-country pre-sales organization. Peter later took responsibility for all NetApp sales in Germany.
This session explores how the safe and ethical development, deployment and use of data-driven technology in public healthcare and drug discovery is foundational to effective and efficient collaborations between providers, policymakers, regulators, tech vendors, insurers and consumers which is key to nurturing resilience across global business and society.
This session will explore the critical role of digital infrastructure in the modern economy. Panellists from diverse businesses within the sector (submarine cables, data centres and fibre providers) will discuss the various trends they see and the challenges they face in raising finance, dealing with regulatory concerns and running their businesses.
This session explores how smart technologies, data and machine learning are set to transform our urban transportation systems making our mobility choices safer, more sustainable and integrated, given the advances in supply chain automation and drone delivery plus industry regulation and consumer incentives encouraging uptake of electric vehicles, while driverless and flying cars may offer longer-term solutions to the congestion and disrepair of today’s surface transportation infrastructure.
This session explores a range of technologies and public-private sector collaborations set to deliver the smart cities of the future and key policy and regulatory reforms required to enable citizens, consumers, enterprise and governments to benefit from subsequent increases in economic productivity, improved infrastructure, effective data-driven decision-making, reduced environmental footprint and enhanced quality of life, while also managing privacy, cybersecurity and other risks arising from the growing abundance of data.
This session explores how the financial services industry has played an instrumental role in supporting enterprise as well as State survival in this period of structural and systemic challenges across local, regional and global economies as well as how the FinTech, payment services and eCommerce have been key to nurturing medium-long term growth which have presented a surge in returns coupled with an amplification of risk.
After a 15 year period of gradual convergence, computing hardware is experiencing a period of extraordinary evolution. This session will explore the various directions that technology will take us in the next half-decade as a result of this new hardware renaissance.
The panellists will consider just what’s powering this new explosion in different hardware platforms and what it means for enterprises planning their hardware strategies over the next few years. They will also take a look at the renaissance from the perspective of the technology companies supporting these environments and bringing new products and platforms to market.
This session explores how to meaningfully create mutual value between legal services buyers and service providers, challenging assumptions and embracing change in the process of redefining problems and to find ways of making business quicker, easier and better, with this panel set to showcase solutions DLA Piper has invested in to do so for the benefit of its clients through the firm’s Law& offering which includes the application of artificial intelligence tools that integrate technology with commercial and legal knowhow.
This session explores the role of global corporate venture capital investing and strategic alliances to not just help restart economies or build back to ‘normal’, but to use this opportunity to “build back better” than before so as to bake in systemic resilience in advance of any future “Black Swan” events, notably: future pandemics; climate change; cyber or nuclear wars etc.
"DLA hit a homerun this year. It was the best summit I have attended. It was highly engaging from the outset and it’s worth mentioning that a number of people I spoke to said the same. Finally, your choice of venue was also inspired. Good location, good facilities and good food."
Senior Legal Counsel at an American multinational corporation that develops video, voice and content collaboration and communication technology
"I attended the Summit for the first time this year and thought that it was excellent from start to finish. Congratulations to you and your team. Great agenda, good speakers and on the pulse of the market. I’m sure this exposure will enhance the DLA Piper brand."
Sales Director for one of the world’s largest Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) businesses addressing the transaction processing, workflow and document management markets
"Had a great time and met some really interesting people. I am going to walk around with some extra inspiration and disruptive ambition."
Managing Director, Head of Specialist Lenders & FinTech Solutions, Major UK-based Retail Bank
"It was a great discussion on the current state and future of FinTech… It was certainly a great event, with amazing speakers"
Co-Founder and CEO of a company which leverages blockchain technology to provide solutions for financial institutions’ transaction management and adviser to a number of financial and technology start-ups