Peter Thiel-Backed Bitpanda Hires Checkout.com’s Ex-Top Lawyer

Bitpanda GmbH, a cryptocurrency trade backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has employed Olivia Broderick as chief legal officer as the corporation seeks to shore up trader self esteem subsequent the collapse of FTX.

Bitpanda hired Broderick as of this month to thrive previous authorized main Oliver Stauber, who still left over the summertime, in accordance to the organization.

Established in 2014 as a Vienna-primarily based brokerage firm, Bitpanda operates all through Europe and expanded into Ireland. The business in November hired KPMG to audit its belongings in the aftermath of FTX’s US personal bankruptcy filing.

FTX’s demise prompted an field reckoning about financial reporting rules for non-general public crypto firms, as effectively as how US accounting rulemakers audit and price newly minted crypto tokens.

The privately held Bitpanda, valued in 2021 at about $4 billion, could be 1 of several bidders for FTX assets, according to a Dec. 3 report by Bloomberg News. Thiel’s Valar Ventures served lead a $263 million fundraising round for Bitpanda in 2021, as properly as a earlier spherical. Thiel is a previous Sullivan & Cromwell associate.

Bitpanda in a statement touted the years of experience Broderick provides in operating with authorized, hazard, and company groups at banking and economical engineering corporations.

Broderick most lately was common counsel and head of regulatory for Checkout Ltd., a cloud-centered payments startup regarded as Checkout.com started by a college or university dropout prior to becoming valued at $40 billion a yr ago.

Prior to signing up for Checkout.com in 2020, the London-dependent Broderick invested pretty much four yrs as normal counsel for U.K. on the net financial institution Zopa Group Ltd., having formerly expended extra than a decade at British monetary products and services huge Barclays PLC.

Brutkasten, an Austrian small business publication, first claimed Bitpanda’s employ the service of of Broderick earlier this thirty day period.

In June, Bitpanda lower hundreds of employment as so-known as Crypto Winter season—a reference to a period of time of extended drop in crypto markets—descended on the enterprise and numerous of its marketplace competition.

Checkout.com also introduced in mid-September that it would remove 5{c024931d10daf6b71b41321fa9ba9cd89123fb34a4039ac9f079a256e3c1e6e8} of its personnel, or about 100 men and women, amid a wave of workplace reductions in drive to strike the fintech and crypto sectors.

Checkout.com did not answer to a request for remark about Broderick’s substitution. Nor did Da-Wai Hu, a former associate basic counsel at Amazon.com Inc. who in Could was named a New York-based mostly standard counsel for Checkout.com.

Broderick’s LinkedIn profile, where by she not too long ago touted her new function at Bitpanda, demonstrates she left Checkout.com in September.