| The FinTech landscape continues to evolve, with new and continuing litigation related to consumer financial services platform innovation, the economics of cryptotokens, features of a blockchain, and allegedly disruptive cryptocurrency trading practices. | For clients involved in these matters, we provide significant technical know-how, in-house proprietary analytical tools, and the critical expertise needed to address these issues. |
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Angelo Chan
Managing Director,
8C Management
Angelo Chan is a financial markets expert specializing in both digital assets and traditional financial instruments. Mr. Chan has extensive expertise in matters involving complex financial instruments and financing structures related to disputes, regulatory challenges, fraud investigations, and bankruptcies. He has been retained as an expert witness in litigation and arbitration and has testified on bitcoin trading and lending issues. Mr. Chan is also deeply knowledgeable on tax disputes related to structured finance and dividend arbitrage (such as Cum-Ex/Cum-Cum) transactions.
As a former managing director of the crypto asset lender BlockFi, Mr. Chan structured cryptocurrency-collateralized financing transactions and cryptocurrency-based derivatives, such as over-the-counter (OTC) swaps. He also launched initiatives for crypto-native products related to staking and decentralized finance (DeFi), led debt financings with financial institutions, and helped manage regulatory challenges.
In addition to his cryptocurrency expertise, Mr. Chan has significant traditional finance experience, having built his career initially at both Barclays Capital (now Barclays Investment Bank) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (now BofA Securities). In those contexts, he structured and executed cross-border financing transactions with complex tax, accounting, and regulatory considerations across a range of underlying assets, including listed equities, sovereign debt, corporate bonds, and asset-backed securities.
Mr. Chan has also worked with bespoke capital instruments, such as preference shares and subordinated debt, and structured OTC derivatives custom-designed to hedge any related currency, interest rate, and other market risks.
Mr. Chan was previously registered with FINRA in the United States (Series 7 and 63) and the (then) FSA in the United Kingdom (CF21 Investment Adviser and CF30 Customer controlled functions).
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Christine A. Parlour
Sylvan C. Coleman Chair in Finance and Accounting,
Haas School of Business,
University of California, Berkeley
Christine A. Parlour is a finance expert who focuses on market microstructure, limit order markets, cryptocurrencies, FinTech, and payment systems. Professor Parlour provides expert testimony on a range of institutionally complex topics involving financial markets, institutions, market manipulation, cryptocurrency, and regulation. She is the former president of the Western Finance Association and a former member of the Nasdaq Economic Advisory Board. She has also served as visiting economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
For more than twenty years, Professor Parlour has researched issues related to the economics of financial exchanges. She specializes in financial markets, including equity markets, debt markets, and cryptocurrencies. In equity markets, she has examined price dynamics, competition for order flow, payment for order flow, and informed trading. Her research on cryptocurrencies addresses the effect of Central Bank Digital Currency on banking system stability, the costs of settlement on the Bitcoin Ledger, and how initial coin offerings (ICOs) differ from traditional funding.
Widely published, Professor Parlour’s award-winning research has appeared in leading finance and economics journals, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. She is an editor at the Review of Finance; associate editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Financial Services Research; and a former associate editor of Management Science and the Journal of Finance.
Professor Parlour has taught courses in investment analysis, FinTech, auctions and microstructure, and capital markets. She is a winner of the Haas School’s Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.
She has held visiting academic appointments at INSEAD, the London School of Economics and Politics, and Paris Dauphine University. Professor Parlour is a past president of the Finance Theory Group.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Craig M. Lewis
Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Finance,
Owen Graduate School of Management,
Vanderbilt University;
Professor of Law,
Vanderbilt Law School
Craig Lewis is an authority on corporate financial policy, asset pricing, and financial market regulation. Professor Lewis is the former chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he also served concurrently as director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. At the agency, he focused on economic analysis in the financial regulatory process, and oversaw a wide range of activities related to agency policy, rulemaking, enforcement and examinations, and risk analysis.
Professor Lewis’s expertise includes convertible debt financing, corporate capital formation, equity analyst behavior, money market and exchange-traded funds, and textual analysis of corporate disclosures. He has testified before Congressional committees. In addition, he has consulted to corporations, public institutions, and government agencies on financial issues, including Dollar General, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, State Street Global Advisors, Union Pacific Railroad, the Federal Trade Commission, and the SEC. He has experience consulting on cryptocurrency features and FinTech markets. Professor Lewis has filed expert reports, and provided expert testimony in deposition and at trial.
Professor Lewis publishes extensively on topics related to financial institutions and markets, and serves as an editor for leading academic journals in finance. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and Financial Management, among others.
The winner of multiple awards for teaching excellence, Professor Lewis has taught undergraduate, M.B.A., and Ph.D. courses on corporate and managerial finance and derivatives. He served as a visiting professor at Donau-Universität Krems in Austria, Goethe-Universität in Germany, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Early in his career, Professor Lewis worked as a CPA at a major accounting firm.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Jennifer Marietta-Westberg
Vice President
Jennifer Marietta-Westberg coheads Cornerstone Research’s corporate and government investigations practice. Dr. Marietta-Westberg consults on economic and financial issues arising in litigation and regulatory investigations in financial markets. She addresses allegations related to financial reporting, asset management, trading, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions.
An experienced expert witness, she has testified on matters related to Rule 10b-5/Section 11 securities class actions, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), general damages, alleged insider trading, alleged Ponzi schemes, and corporate governance. Dr. Marietta-Westberg has supported respondents in enforcement actions involving the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She leads large teams to support academic and industry experts at all stages of litigation, including trial.
Dr. Marietta-Westberg has chaired the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC, which offers guidance to the Commission on regulatory priorities and initiatives to support the integrity of the securities marketplace. She also serves on the board of directors at the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Marietta-Westberg worked for ten years at the SEC, in several capacities. She served as the deputy chief economist and deputy director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA). Dr. Marietta-Westberg also managed economic analysis in support of Commission policy and rulemaking in the areas of asset management, broker-dealers, credit rating agencies, and market microstructure. She oversaw many of DERA’s economic analyses in support of international initiatives.
Prior to joining the SEC, Dr. Marietta-Westberg was an assistant professor at Michigan State University. Her research has been published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and European Financial Management.
Women We Admire has named Dr. Marietta-Westberg to its list of exceptional Women Leaders in Washington, DC.
FinTech, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency Capabilities
Cornerstone Research and our team of experts have substantial experience collecting and analyzing historical transactions data across blockchains, centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to provide valuable information and actionable insights for our clients, including:
- Forensic tracing of token value transfer
- Decoding the pseudo-anonymity of wallets
- Economic analysis of blockchain properties
Our proprietary in-house blockchain databases and tracing tools support our crypto analysis and consulting services.
Cornerstone Research has consulted to clients and supported leading market microstructure experts on a wide range of issues pertaining to:
- Reported volume integrity and market quality on major cryptocurrency exchanges
- Token price discovery across cryptocurrency exchanges
- Price impacts of large cryptocurrency orders
- Wash trading allegations on specific cryptocurrency exchanges
- Auction mechanisms
- Assessment of the impact of stable coins on cryptocurrency markets
In regulatory investigations and private litigation arising from the initial distribution of cryptotokens, clients have retained Cornerstone Research to evaluate drivers of a token’s value through an economic lens. This includes assessment of fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well as stable coins. Our analyses have helped address issues within the context of the Howey Test, which lays out the general approach to determining whether an asset should be considered a security.
We leverage significant experience in complex securities cases and valuation assignments and apply it to cryptocurrency-specific issues. Cornerstone Research has conducted damages analyses in matters relating to cryptocurrency trading and token valuation. Our assignments have included:
- Evaluating rescission damages claims for heavily traded cryptocurrencies
- Valuing companies whose primary assets are illiquid cryptotokens
- Analyzing damages claims through a comparison of the economic value associated with cryptocurrency trading strategies
Cornerstone Research assists clients in analyzing blockchain transactions, voting delegation, and proof of work or proof of stake designs. We have evaluated:
- Underlying blockchain code for scalability and operability
- Genesis block allocations and traced movements in cryptotokens for the purpose of assessing damage claims. This includes syncing nodes and using APIs (application programming interfaces) as part of the data processing and analysis.
As technology has begun to change the way consumers interact with financial products, new types of disputes have emerged. Our experience with traditional consumer financial products provides a solid foundation to assist clients with regulatory and litigation matters arising from new technology. For example, we have evaluated how existing consumer finance regulation applies to new platforms and how borrowers interact with developing technology for loan products. We have also analyzed financial “robo-advisors” and how automated investment strategies perform relative to alternative portfolios under different risk-return scenarios.
Cornerstone Research has extensive experience with assessing how government regulations apply to cryptocurrency and assisting clients with responses to government entities including the CFTC and SEC. This includes assessing allegations of unregistered securities offerings, estimating alleged harm, and evaluating claims of market manipulation. Our staff and experts have experience presenting analysis directly to regulatory entities.
Cornerstone Research has experience with multiple NFT matters involving:
- Analysis of NFT trading records and prices.
- Assessment of business operations of NFT platforms.
- Analysis of the differences in NFT markets vs. traditional securities (e.g., stock and bond) markets and the role of information in various markets.
- Analysis of NFT brand equity and assessing whether certain behaviors from a competitor harm that brand equity.
- Evaluating drivers of NFT intellectual property value.
Selected Professionals
Our consultants contribute expertise in economics, finance, accounting, and marketing, as well as business acumen, familiarity with the litigation process, and a commitment to provide outstanding support.
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How can we help you?
For more information or assistance with a specific matter, please contact us.