Peter Thiel-Backed Bitpanda Hires Checkout.com’s Ex-Top Lawyer

Bitpanda GmbH, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has hired Olivia Broderick as chief legal officer as the company seeks to shore up investor confidence following the collapse of FTX.

Bitpanda hired Broderick as of this month to succeed former legal chief Oliver Stauber, who left over the summer, according to the company.

Founded in 2014 as a Vienna-based brokerage firm, Bitpanda operates throughout Europe and expanded into Ireland. The company in November hired KPMG to audit its assets in the aftermath of FTX’s US bankruptcy filing.

FTX’s demise prompted an industry reckoning over financial reporting rules for non-public crypto companies, as well as how US accounting rulemakers audit and value newly minted crypto tokens.

The privately held Bitpanda, valued in 2021 at roughly $4 billion, could be one of several bidders for FTX assets, according to a Dec. 3 report by Bloomberg News. Thiel’s Valar Ventures helped lead a $263 million fundraising round for Bitpanda in 2021, as well as a previous round. Thiel is a former Sullivan & Cromwell associate.

Bitpanda in a statement touted the years of experience Broderick brings in working with legal, risk, and business teams at banking and financial technology companies.

Broderick most recently was general counsel and head of regulatory for Checkout Ltd., a cloud-based payments startup known as Checkout.com founded by a college dropout prior to being valued at $40 billion a year ago.

Prior to joining Checkout.com in 2020, the London-based Broderick spent almost four years as general counsel for U.K. online lender Zopa Group Ltd., having previously spent more than a decade at British financial services giant Barclays PLC.

Brutkasten, an Austrian business publication, first reported Bitpanda’s hire of Broderick earlier this month.

In June, Bitpanda cut hundreds of jobs as so-called Crypto Winter—a reference to a period of prolonged decline in crypto markets—descended on the company and many of its industry competitors.

Checkout.com also announced in mid-September that it would eliminate 5% of its staff, or roughly 100 people, amid a wave of workplace reductions in force to hit the fintech and crypto sectors.

Checkout.com didn’t respond to a request for comment about Broderick’s replacement. Nor did Da-Wai Hu, a former associate general counsel at Amazon.com Inc. who in May was named a New York-based general counsel for Checkout.com.

Broderick’s LinkedIn profile, where she recently touted her new role at Bitpanda, shows she left Checkout.com in September.