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Thomas P. Brown

Senior Counsel, Fintech

tombrown@paulhastings.com
San Francisco+1 415 856 7033

Thomas Brown is a senior counsel at Paul Hastings. J.P. Morgan has called him “fintech’s most famous legal mind.” Over three decades, he has represented nearly every major company in the space, as well as their founders and investors. 

This represents his second stint with the firm. Prior to rejoining, Thomas was a partner with and general counsel of NYCA, a leading venture capital firm focused on connecting innovative companies to the global financial system. While previously with Paul Hastings, Thomas' practice was focused primarily on competition law and legal issues affecting the financial services industry. He is a past chair of the firm’s Competition practice and co-chair of the firm’s Fintech practice. In addition to strategically advising payment systems and financial services clients across a broad spectrum of regulatory issues, he has litigated notable antitrust cases, including class actions.

REPRESENTATIONS

  • Upstart, in obtaining the first ever no action letter from the CFBP regarding the company’s underwriting model and the use of non-traditional signals of credit quality.

  • eBay, in its defeat of a putative class action in which plaintiffs claimed that eBay’s acquisition of PayPal enabled the company to charge supra-competitive fees.

RECOGNITIONS

  • Band 2 – FinTech Legal

    Chambers (2019-20)

  • Antitrust - Merger Control

    The Legal 500 (2021)

PUBLICATIONS

  • "S. Merger Control in the High-Technology Sector", The Merger Control Review 8th, Co-author

    September 2017

  • “Unfair” Practices in the Financial Services Industry: The New Boss is the same as the Old Boss", 81 Antitrust L. J. 981, Co-author

    2017

ASSOCIATIONS

  • Member

    American Law Institute

  • Senior Editor

    Antitrust Law Developments