The colossal downfall of the world’s second largest crypto exchange, FTX, serves as a chilling reminder about the importance of basic risk management. Enter Alasdair Pitt, the head of legal at Zodia Custody, a regulated subsidiary of Standard Chartered established in 2020 that provides crypto storage for institutional investors.
Pitt continues to help steer Zodia, which has since grown into one of the UK’s few providers of crypto-linked services that are regulated to traditional bank-grade standards. It requires Pitt to constantly react to market disruption and look ahead to fast-evolving regulatory and legal developments. In Europe that includes the Markets in Crypto Assets bill (MiCA), while the UK’s upcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill lays the post-Brexit foundation for future regulation — starting with payments using stable coins.
There’s another challenge for Pitt, who trained at Clifford Chance before moving in-house nearly 30 years ago. His 2020 jump from Standard Chartered to Zodia coincided with his return to the UK, after around 25 years spent living in Japan and Hong Kong. It’s demanded a quick understanding of not just new crypto laws, but how the UK’s entire regulatory regime has evolved since his magic circle days.