Speaker

Smaragda heads our Capital Markets & Financial Services Regulation practice. She is a capital markets law and financial regulation expert with more than 15 years of experience at the intersection of market infrastructure, financial services, corporate governance and regulatory reform.

Before joining the firm, she served as General Counsel and Head of the Legal, Regulatory & Compliance Division of the Athens Exchange Group, now Euronext Athens, where she acted as legal counsel to the Board of Directors, member of the Executive Committee and Head of Corporate Governance. Her profile combines private practice expertise with first-hand executive experience in the operation, regulation and governance of financial market infrastructures.

Smaragda advises banks, investment firms, asset managers, listed companies, market infrastructures, fintechs and financial institutions in general on the full spectrum of capital markets, financial services and market infrastructure matters, including licensing, trading and post-trading rules, issuer obligations, corporate governance, ESG regulation, fund regulation and ongoing compliance.

She has been a member of several legislative drafting committees of the Hellenic Ministry of Economy and Finance, contributing to reforms concerning MiFID, UCITS, AIFMD, SRD, the DLT Regime and equity-based crowdfunding. She has also been actively involved in European and international market infrastructure forums.

She teaches as an academic associate at the University of Piraeus and at the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and has delivered seminars and published studies in the fields of state aid law, EU law and banking regulation, with her most notable work being her monograph “State Aid for Addressing the Financial Crisis.”

She is General Secretary of the Managing Committee of the Hellenic Union of Listed Companies, member of the Advisory Committee of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission and Member of the Stock Market Steering Committee of Euronext Athens.

Smaragda has been recognised among the top 20 Women Leaders of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE).

She has been a member of the Athens Bar since 2010 and is admitted before the Supreme Court.