Technology: Finance

Cornerstone Research leverages significant experience in complex securities and asset management cases and applies it to issues specific to FinTech investments. We have consulted with clients and supported investment and market microstructure experts on a wide range of issues pertaining to:

• Alleged violations of investment guidelines and the reasonableness of disclosures.
• Alleged violations of fiduciary duties and internal risk control procedures.
• Performance of automated investment strategies. This includes analyzing “robo advisors” and how automated investment strategies perform relative to alternative portfolios under different risk-return scenarios.
• Cybersecurity in financial markets.

These disputes may involve huge quantities of transaction-level and participant-level data. Our staff and affiliated experts have applied market microstructure theory to datasets with billions of observations.

Cornerstone Research assists clients in analyzing the economics behind a number of diverse use cases of the blockchain technology, including cryptocurrency and tokens. We have experience in analyzing whether a crypto token is a security based on the economic realities of the case.

In addition to cryptocurrency and tokens, we have expertise analyzing the structural features of payment systems and supply chain data management, as well as other implementations of blockchain in financial and capital markets. For example, we have evaluated value propositions and underlying blockchain codes for scalability and operability related to use cases in the financial world. We have also examined blockchain data to trace movements of the crypto tokens for the purpose of assessing damages claims.

As technology has begun to change the way consumers interact with financial products, new types of disputes have emerged. Cornerstone Research’s experience with traditional consumer financial products provides a solid foundation to assist clients with regulatory and litigation matters arising from new technologies. For example, we have evaluated how existing consumer finance regulation applies to new platforms and how borrowers interact with developing technology for loan products.