Schalast | Team

Dr. Thorsten Voß

Attorney | Partner

Dr. Thorsten Voß is a partner in the practice group Banking & Finance. He specialises in banking supervisory law, capital market and investment law and supports his clients out of court as well as in proceedings before the supervisory authorities, with a special focus on the law of digitalisation.

Biography

Dr. Thorsten Voß, born in Gelsenkirchen, studied law at the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster after training as a banker at Deutsche Bank AG. There he worked at the Institute for Legal History (Chair of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c Reiner Schulze) and received his doctorate (Dr. iur.) from Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren at the Institute for Information, Telecommunications and Media Law with the comparative law thesis "Copyright Law in Switzerland and Germany as a Regulatory Model for the Internet Economy in Comparative Law".

After his second state examination in Düsseldorf in 2001, Dr. Thorsten Voß first worked in Bern as a lawyer for a leading Swiss boutique in IT and telecommunications law. In 2004 he joined the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), where he helped establish the Prospectus Group and led numerous prominent proceedings for the prosecution of violations of capital market law. Before joining Schalast, he was a partner in Frankfurt am Main for more than 12 years in leading national and international law firms.

Dr. Thorsten Voß represents domestic and foreign banks, FinTechs, fund initiators and investment companies in all matters of financial supervisory and capital market law.

The main focus of his advice is on the investment law structuring and launch of capital investment products and the support of asset managers, fund initiators, management companies and financial service providers in regulatory issues. He advises on the conception of open and closed investment funds in Germany and abroad for private and institutional investors. The closed-end funds on which Dr. Thorsten Voß advises are products of asset classes such as real estate, private equity, renewable energies and infrastructure. He supports domestic capital management companies in licensing issues and all other regulatory issues of the German Investment Companies Act (KAGB). He also advises foreign asset managers seeking access to the German and European market by offering services such as portfolio management or investment advice to a German investment fund or the distribution of their own fund products in Germany. He advises banks, financial, securities and payment service providers on the establishment and licensing, outsourcing/insourcing of key functions, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions.

In addition, Dr. Thorsten Voß has established a practice for the law of FinTechs with a focus on block-chain based investment products.

Furthermore, Dr. Thorsten Voß is regularly involved in regulatory change projects such as the implementation of MiFID II/MiFIR and MAR. In addition, he advises both regulated and unregulated companies on the design, introduction or review of group-wide compliance programmes and on internal investigations and investigations by German and foreign authorities into possible compliance violations.

PhD. Thorsten Voß moderates and lectures at conferences and has distinguished himself through numerous publications, including as editor of commentaries on capital market law regarding the German Securities Trading Act (WpHG), the EU Prospectus Regulation and the German Securities Prospectus Act (EU Prospectus Regulation and WpPG), the law on alternative investments (comprises the German Investment Companies Act (KAGB), the German Investment Act (VermAnlG), the Investment Ordinance (AnlV), the Solvency II Directive and the Market Abuse Ordinance (MAR)) and the Sales Prospectus Act (VerkProspG) (all of which are available at C. H. Beck) as well as the manual on the "Law of FinTechs" published by de Gruyter. He is also the founding co-editor of the "Zeitschrift für das Recht der Digitalisierung der Wirtschaft (ZdiW)" published by Wolters Kluwer.

He is a lecturer at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (lectures on banking supervisory law and on legal issues of digitisation as part of the Master of Financial Law programme). He is also a lecturer in the WM Group's specialist course for banking and capital market law.

He is a member of the German Society for Law and Information Technology. (DGRI), the German-Swiss Lawyers' Association (DSJV), the German Lawyers' Association e.V. (DAV) as well as in its working group on banking and capital market law and in the Marschall Club of the Frankfurter Literaturhaus e.V. In the federal association Blockchain he is involved in the committees "Finance" as well as in the "Hesse regional group".