PARTNER

Patrick Daugherty

For 35 years, I’ve been engrossed in “the law of money”: capital raising, M&A, banking, investment banking, brokerage, insurance, the creation of new financial products such as loan sales, swaps and exchange-traded funds, and trading and investment. I still do that, but for the last 5 years, I’ve also and mainly immersed myself in “the law of the future of money”: securities tokens, crypto assets, decentralized finance (DeFi), alternative trading systems, and exchanges (foreign and domestic). I help entrepreneurs in the emerging field of “Web 3.0” by advising them how to structure their business plans to comply with securities, commodities, derivatives, banking, and consumer protection laws that were put on the books decades before computers existed. It’s the most challenging and rewarding work that I’ve ever done, and I plan to stay on the cutting edge forever.

Although I’ve worked for numerous F500 and even F100 companies, and they have their attractions, too, emerging growth companies have always captured my imagination because of the commitment and brainpower exhibited by the entrepreneurs who found and drive them. I especially like working with missionaries as opposed to mercenaries, and I find more missionaries in EGCs than elsewhere. I am a missionary for the nascent digital assets industry.

I spend as much time as possible immersed in my passions, which are securities law, capital raising and digital assets, food & wine, and philanthropy. I’ve written & published several books on securities law in my spare time and am writing one on digital assets now. I’ve gotten into the wine business through my client Vintage Wine Estates (Nasdaq: VWE), which I took public through a De-SPAC merger in 2021. I currently lecture on legal topics at Northwestern University, where I helped lead the recently-completed $6 billion “We Will” capital campaign, and at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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