Presenters

Professor Tana Pistorius, Head of Department Commercial Law, University of Auckland
Tana is a professor of Commercial Law and the Head of the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland Business School (UABS). Tana is the Programme Director of the Master of Information Governance Programme of the UABS and a Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Law and Business. Tana is an affiliated member of the Z-inspection® initiative, a holistic process for evaluating the trustworthiness of AI-based technologies at different stages of the AI lifecycle. She has a keen interest in the management of intellectual property, legal aspects of frontier technologies, the data economy, and information technology law. Her recent contributions to the literature include New Zealand Business Law Quarterly article “The Regulation of Big Data: Data Governance Beyond Data Protection” and Policy Quarterly article “Automated Traffic Congestion Charging Systems: Privacy Considerations for New Zealand.”

Bryan Ventura, Partner, Hamilton Locke
Bryan is an experienced financial services and investment funds lawyer, specialising in financial technology and virtual assets (crypto / Web3). He also advises on mergers and acquisitions, start-ups, and general corporate and commercial law. Bryan is an expert in virtual asset projects – cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain – and their regulation. His expertise covers financial markets conduct law (the FMCA) including licensing, anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism, financial services regulation, company law, the NZX Main Board Listing Rules, the NZX Participant Rules, and Catalist Public Market Regulations. Bryan advises on capital raising, commercial contracts, consumer Terms and Conditions (T&Cs), establishment of investment funds (unit trusts, limited partnerships), corporate structuring, all forms of traditional financial services (retail and wholesale), as well as fintechs. He also advises Web3 companies and VASPs, start-ups, medium and large corporates, and financial institutions, based both in New Zealand and offshore. Bryan is the Chair of BlockchainNZ, which is part of the New Zealand Tech Alliance. He is also a Council Member of the International Digital Asset Exchange Association (IDAXA) and a member of the Payments NZ forum.