Alternative Trading Systems - What They Are and How They Can Help You

Ms. Lerner will explain what an alternative trading system (ATS) is and how it differs from a registered exchange such as Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange, who can operate an ATS, and what kinds of securities can be traded on an ATS. She will also describe what the role of an ATS is and how the opportunity to trade securities on an ATS is an important inducement to investors in raising capital for emerging companies.

Linda Lerner is a partner and the head of Halloran Farkas + Kittila’s New York office. Linda is widely recognized for her deep expertise in the regulation of financial markets and their participants. She works with clients seeking to offer innovative products and services, and assists in gaining regulatory approval for them.

Linda devotes much of her practice to the regulation of security tokens and is widely sought out for her experience in obtaining approval for brokerage firms to offer and trade these securities and to establish platforms for their trading. She works closely with SEC and FINRA senior staff to resolve challenging issues in the digital security space, including non-custodial solutions, stablecoins and offering and selling other digital assets. Linda is the founding chair of the American Bar Association Task Force on Offering and Trading Tokenized Securities and frequently writes and lectures on digital assets. Linda works closely with firms as they develop digital asset strategies, and then works just as closely with regulators to ensure that those strategies can be implemented.

Linda also focuses on the so-called “finder” issue and co-authored the M&A Brokers No-Action Letter Request to the SEC. She serves as Chair of the ABA Task Force on Private Placement Brokers, assists unregistered finders to operate within the law, and interacts frequently with regulatory and federal legislative staff to obtain additional relief for intermediaries who facilitate capital raising.

More generally, Linda advises broker-dealers and investment advisors on federal and state regulation of their activities, including, among other things:

Rule interpretation

Registration requirements

Risk management

Doing business in foreign jurisdictions and chaperoning foreign broker-dealers conducting business in the U.S.

Supervisory procedures

Research and soft dollar arrangements

Review of marketing material

Placement agent and underwriting agreements

Agreements with employees and vendors, including clearing firms

Regulatory aspects of new product development

Linda co-authors the Bloomberg BNA Portfolio “Broker-Dealer Registration: Demystifying the Process.” Her clients have included a broad range of institutions, from serving as in-house General Counsel for a brokerage firm seeking to operate one of the first electronic trading platforms to outside counsel for global financial institutions and startups. She helps her clients launch innovative trading systems for equities, fixed income, fiat and cryptocurrency, derivatives and other instruments. Linda also helps fintech firms develop product and market strategies and assists them to meet with regulators to become preferred providers of services.

Linda has served on a number of Nasdaq and FINRA committees focused on, among other things, trade disputes, electronic trading and trade reporting.


This presentation was made possible, in part, by the School of Engineering at Fairfield University please see:
https://www.fairfield.edu/undergraduate/academics/schools-and-colleges/school-of-engineering/