Patrick Daugherty

Patrick Daugherty conceived and directs the digital assets practice of Foley & Lardner LLP. He teaches a course on digital assets at Cornell Law School every fall, at NU Pritzker also starting spring 2025, and lectures at U-Chicago, IIT-Kent and other law schools. Mr. Daugherty is the author, co-author or editor of several books on securities regulation and new financial products. Digital asset clients include exchanges, institutional investors, funds and proprietary trading firms, as well as software protocol and app developers and token issuers. At the SEC, Mr. Daugherty helped create Rule 144A and Regulation S, now used routinely in institutional and non-US markets. He enlists non-US counsel as needed to devise global solutions for clients. Mr. Daugherty is also Foley’s most senior corporate securities lawyer, advising executives, entrepreneurs and investors on strategic initiatives and governance. His advisory expertise covers the federal securities laws and, with support from colleagues, the Commodity Exchange Act and money transmission. Mr. Daugherty structures the full spectrum of financial products, services and transactions, ranging from angel or seed investment and multi-series preferred stock to IPOs and secondary offerings, SPAC and PIPE offerings and De-SPAC mergers. Also in his bailiwick: mezzanine, convertible, exchangeable, high-yield and high-grade debt; “363” sales and Chapter 11 restructurings; syndicated loans; VC & PE transactions; ETFs, ETPs and private funds; NFTs and fungible tokens, including securities tokens and DeFi products and services. He advises banks, finance companies, insurance companies, broker-dealers, FCMs, ATSs, SEFs, investment advisors, investment companies (mutual funds), hedge funds, family offices, trading firms and DAOs in transactions, SEC and FINRA matters and other regulatory and governance matters. He is open to considering select board of directors and advisory board appointments.