Meet The Team

Leadership Team

James Nicholls

Managing Director, Braithwate

James is an experienced strategic advisor to Fintechs, digital assets and capital markets businesses, helping clients analyse and respond to changing markets and regulatory requirements. He has a deep understanding of financial services business models and loves helping firms develop practical strategies.

Prior to establishing Braithwate in 2019, James was a Partner at Baringa Partners LLP, where he setup and led the US financial services practice. Before moving to New York, James built the Risk & Compliance practice, ending up with a a team of 45 advisors.

James now splits his time between London and New York. He received his degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Chris Holland

Partner, HM

Chris provides outsourced general counsel, compliance and C-Suite advisory services, in addition to managing the overall business. Chris has extensive expertise assisting financial services and fintech companies.

Prior to Holland & Marie, Chris worked as Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel at a Southeast Asia-focused, boutique investment bank. Chris has considerable experience managing communications with regulators and implementing cross-jurisdictional policies and procedures. Prior to that role, Chris worked in the Singapore, Hong Kong and New York offices of Clifford Chance where he was Counsel in the Capital Markets Department.

Chris was a finalist for Singapore In-House Lawyer of the Year by Asian Legal Business in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Chris is a New York qualified lawyer and received his law degree from Duke University and his Bachelor’s degree from The University of Virginia.

FXp Team

Arjun Vajala

Director, Braithwate

Arjun provides risk and regulatory compliance advisor services to financial services and FinTech firms. He has 20 years’ experience in financial services consulting and has worked on a breadth of projects ranging from risk advisory, derivatives valuations, model validation and legal entity subsidiarisation and strategy.

Prior to joining Braithwate, Arjun worked on a few independent contracting roles for UBS and Citigroup and was formerly at PwC’s Risk Advisory practice in London and Melbourne.

Arjun has a Master’s degree in Applied Finance from Monash University, Melbourne.

Pete Otaqui

Lead Engineer & Technical Architect, Braithwate

Pete is full-stack developer with 25+ years’ experience in hands-on coding and IT management roles.

He is experienced in a wide range of languages and frameworks, including Java, C#, Python, Go, Ruby and Javascript, on the web and in native app development.

Pete’s most recent role was as Engineering Manager at AMX shortly after when the company was acquired by the Carne Group, one of the largest third-party ManCo companies in Asset Management. Initially with a team of 8 engineers, and after a reorganisation with multiple teams totalling 24 full stack engineers working in C#, Node, SQL Server, MySQL, RavenDB, and microservices, developing all user-facing applications.

Lorette Goh

Senior Compliance Consultant, HM

Lorette provides compliance consulting services to financial services and FinTech firms at HM.

Prior to Holland & Marie, Lorette was the compliance officer in OCBC Bank, overseeing the FATCA CRS reporting of overseas branches. She also served as a transaction analyst officer and business coordinator in Citibank and DBS bank, respectively. Lorette graduated with a Bachelor in Management (Business) degree from the Singapore Institution of Management.