Eloi Roche

About Eloi Roche

Eloi is a senior associate in our Paris finance practice group.

Eloi regularly advises French and foreign financial institutions and insurance and reinsurance undertakings on a wide range of financial services and regulatory issues including licensing, group structure, governance, prudential and conduct issues.

Eloi's areas of practice also comprise:

• advising on the regulatory aspects of M&A and Private Equity transactions involving financial institutions;
• asset management work, including: the setting-up of French funds; the registration and marketing of foreign UCITS and AIFs in France; and advice in relation to investment management agreements, financial advisory agreements, distribution agreements or agreements concerning delegation of financial management for funds); and
• acting for clients in regulatory investigations and enforcement actions before French regulatory authorities (ACPR and AMF).

Eloi also regularly advises on legal issues relating to new financial services (i.e. payment services, issuance and management of electronic money, crypto-asset issuances and services (including ICOs/STOs and crypto-asset custody and exchange services) and the use of technology in the financial sector (including Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)).

Prior to joining Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP Paris in January 2020, Eloi worked for two years in the Regulatory team of Linklaters LLP Paris and six months in the Legal Department of the French financial markets authority - the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).

He speaks fluent French and English.

Recent work

M&A and Private Equity transactions: 

• HSBC on the disposal of its French retail banking business to My Money Group;
• UBS on the acquisition of Credit Suisse;
• a bidder on the sale by Aviva of its French non-life and life insurance business;
• BNP Paribas on the disposal of certain of its fund distribution activities to Allfunds Bank.

Advisory matters:

• Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations on its contractual partnership with AGRASC (i.e., the French administrative body in charge of managing seized criminal assets) for the custody of seized crypto-assets;
• C2E Market, the first French execution venue to deal in Certificates for Energy Conservation (CEE), on the
  establishment of the C2E exchange;
• CA Indosuez Gestion on establishing their Tiera Capital private wealth funds in the form of French fonds d’investissement professionnels spécialisés (FIPS) or fonds professionnels de capital-investissement (FPCI);
• Foreign credit institutions, payment institutions, electronic money institutions, crypto-asset service providers and BigTechs on the preliminary analysis, structuring and implementation of their new payment services, electronic money and crypto-asset services offerings in/to France;
• Foreign investment banks in relation to their Brexit planning and MiFID II implementation.

Regulatory enforcement:

• a French financial and insurance broker on an investigation of the French banking and insurance regulator - the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR) - into its financial advisory and insurance intermediation businesses;
• a French banking group on an investigation of the ACPR into its AML/CFT group governance.