Licensing and change of control for regulated firms.
Investment firms, payment institutions, electronic money institutions and crypto-asset service providers — authorised, acquired and kept compliant across the UK, the EU and offshore.
- 2016Advising regulated firms since
- UK · EU · OffshoreWhere we take work
- SMF16 / 17Approved-person roles held personally
- ~20 yrsIn brokerage, payments and online gaming
The firms we act for
Four permission families, and the variations within them. If your firm is one of these, the work is ours whether it is a first authorisation, an extension of permission, or a change of ownership.
Investment firms
MiFID investment firms and their UK equivalents — brokerage, dealing, portfolio management, advice. Includes full consumer credit permission where a firm's model needs it.
Payment institutions and EMIs
Authorised and small payment institutions, electronic money institutions, and the agent and distributor structures beneath them. Safeguarding, wind-down and capital are where these applications are won or lost.
Crypto-asset service providers
MiCA authorisation in the EU and its equivalents elsewhere, for exchange, custody, transfer and related services — including firms moving from an existing registration to full authorisation.
Change of control and acquisitions
Buying or selling a licensed firm is a regulatory transaction before it is a commercial one. We prepare the controller's case and run the change-in-control notification alongside whoever is broking the deal.
We do not act for banks. Deposit-taking is a different animal with a different regulator relationship, and we would rather tell you that now than halfway through.
Where we work
United Kingdom
FCA authorisation and variation, senior manager approvals, and the Connect filings that carry them.
European Union
CySEC in Cyprus, the MFSA in Malta, the Central Bank of Cyprus, and MiCA authorisation across the bloc.
Offshore
Established offshore regimes where the licence is real and the regulator is engaged — the jurisdiction follows the business model, not the other way round.
Why firms come to us
Most regulatory consultants have read the handbook. Fewer have been the person the regulator holds responsible. Peter Zachariades has held SMF16 and SMF17 approved-person roles, sits as a non-executive director of an FCA-authorised electronic money institution, and worked a CySEC authorisation from the inside before advising on them — after roughly twenty years in brokerage, payments and online gaming. Pi Zeta Ltd has advised regulated firms since 2016.
That matters most where an application is judged rather than processed: a change in control, a business model the regulator has not seen before, a firm whose last application was refused.