Avv. Francesco Dagnino

A founder and managing partner of LEXIA Avvocati, Francesco Dagnino specialises in Capital Markets, Corporate and M&A, Financial Services, FinTech & Crypto-Assets. Francesco’s leadership is recognized in the Italian legal services market with particular focus on Tech, FinTech, Crypto, and Blockchain sectors, having devised creative and innovative solutions that have left their mark. Francesco was awarded the prize as Best Lawyer in Italy for the category “FinTech” at the 2019 Italian Top Legal Industry Awards. Moreover, he is founder and vice-president of AIEDA, the Italian Shareholders’ Rights Association (Associazione Italiana per l’Esercizio dei Diritti degli Azionisti).

His expertise includes:

• assisting Italian listed companies and their shareholders (including activist shareholders) on corporate governance matters, proxy-fights, compensation, related-party transactions, market abuse, internal dealing, shareholders’ agreements, shareholder’s meetings etc.;
• counselling both listed and non-listed companies, financial institutions and asset managers on capital markets transactions including IPOs, rights’ issue, shares’ buybacks and public tender offers;
• handling domestic and cross-border public and private M&A, private equity and venture capital transactions in which regularly advises both Italian and international clients, including private equity funds, sovereign funds, multinationals, innovative start-ups and high net worth individuals;
• advising tech companies on financial regulation matters concerning innovative FinTech and Crypto-Assets platforms and services.

Francesco Dagnino was admitted to the Italian Bar in 2006. He obtained a Ph.D. in Corporate and Financial Markets Law from the University of Bologna, and an L.L.M in Corporate Law from the New York University School of Law as a Fulbright Scholar and an Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar. He was a visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. He graduated in Law summa cum laude from the University of Palermo. He is the author of many academic publications in the fields of corporate law, capital markets and financial regulation, and a regular speaker at conferences. Before founding LEXIA Avvocati, he worked at Top Tier international law firm.

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• In the negotiation, he is very, very sophisticated. We looked at the chance to start legal action and he was able to identify angles. We put together clauses that protected me a lot. He has a very commercial approach and was very, very reactive in the negotiation. 
• He is very professional and very quick.
• I appreciate that he really knows the story of the client and what the client needs. We were able to see that he really cared about the client and what needed to be done. 
• Francesco Dagnino is very knowledgeable and responsive – great for complex regulatory issues.