BaFin division head Sebastian de Schmidt joins Noerr

Noerr is further strengthening its advisory services offered to listed companies with a top-class expert. On 16 August 2019, Sebastian de Schmidt, who heads the Insider Supervision division at the German financial supervisory authority BaFin, will be joining the firm’s Frankfurt office as counsel.

“Sebastian de Schmidt is an expert with profound knowledge of all regulatory issues affecting listed companies, in particular post-listing-admission obligations,” says Torsten Fett, co-managing partner of Noerr. De Schmidt has worked for BaFin for 14 years and before heading Insider Supervision was in charge of the Trading Suspension, Short-Selling Monitoring and Directors’ Dealings division. Prior to this, he was for many years deputy head of the division responsible for investigating market manipulation. He is also a certified stock exchange trader and lecturer at the University of Bayreuth and the University of Osnabrück.

“With his many years of regulatory experience, Sebastian de Schmidt is a perfect fit for the range of advisory services we offer,” emphasises Torsten Fett, saying that post-listing-admission obligations have become considerably more relevant due to the significantly increased fines as a result of newly introduced European regulations. Torsten Fett also points out that when advising listed companies it is extremely important to know precisely how the financial supervisory authority interprets regulations. Ongoing obligations of a listed company include ad-hoc disclosures, maintaining insider lists and notifying directors’ dealings. The issue of ad-hoc disclosures has recently once again become of increasing concern for companies, in particular with respect to “protracted processes”.

At Noerr, de Schmidt will work as a member of the practice groups Compliance & Internal Investigations and Capital Markets and advise listed companies on how to properly meet their post-admission obligations and also support them in investigations. He will in particular work with the heads of Noerr’s Compliance & Internal Investigations practice, Sophia Habbe and Torsten Fett, as well as with capital markets experts Holger Alfes, Gerald Reger (both co-heads of the firm’s Capital Markets practice) and Laurenz Wieneke.