How this Financial Law LLM alum mastered the derivatives market

Few lawyers in banking and financial law have approached the derivatives market from as many angles as Trevor Noronha.

At the time of his 2001 call to the bar, Noronha was in private practice for a Bay Street law firm working on secured lending and securitization transactions. He then made the leap in-house to the Toronto-Dominion Bank’s Wholesale Bank, TD Securities, a major dealer in derivatives in both Canadian and global capital markets.

During his tenure at TD – where he eventually rose to the position of senior counsel in its legal department – Noronha cemented his expertise in derivatives when he graduated from Osgoode’s part-time Professional LLM in Financial Law in 2012.

Still, as he approached two decades in the financial services industry, there was still one piece of the derivatives puzzle missing for Noronha. In 2019, he finally filled the gap when he took on his current role at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan – more commonly known as HOOPP.

“Pensions and asset managers are on the buy-side of the industry, so I’m using the same knowledge that I gained at TD, but on the opposite side of the transaction,” Noronha explains. “By taking a new perspective, it has given me an opportunity to really hone those abilities in a different way.”

“Because HOOPP’s transactional volumes are not as large as a major bank and there are fewer layers of internal staff at HOOPP, it has given me opportunities to learn about more than just law. I work closely with the trading desk, our tax experts and HOOPP’s various operational departments,” he adds.

Now HOOPP’s Senior Legal Counsel, Investments, Noronha has adapted quickly to his new vantage point, throwing himself into an active role with the Global Peer Financing Association, an industry group representing major global asset owners with asset holdings worth around $10 trillion between them.

“It has really enabled me to become much closer to some of my colleagues in the legal groups of other pension funds and in the industry generally,” he says. “I meet a lot of new contacts through my work with the GPFA and I think people look at you in a different way when they see you have an Osgoode LLM.”

Back in his university days, Noronha was actually on track to become an accountant, before realizing that the profession wasn’t quite the right fit.

“I really didn’t like doing auditing, so after a couple of years, I thought I would rather go to law school,” he says.

Noronha enrolled at the University of Ottawa’s law school, staying put after graduation to join a local corporate law boutique as the city took centre stage during Canada’s high-tech boom at the turn of the 21^st century. The firm’s strong securities practice ignited Noronha’s interest in the practice area, but he decided to pursue his newfound passion elsewhere and moved to Toronto in 2001 to join a firm on Bay Street.

“I very much liked Ottawa, but I hated the Ottawa winters,” Noronha says.

Although he had a longstanding interest in further legal education, Noronha began exploring the possibility more seriously as the world emerged from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, sensing that a new wave of regulations was about to sweep the industry.   

“I’ve always loved school and I wanted to do something different that would deepen my knowledge,” Noronha says.

Osgoode’s Financial Law LLM stood out, not only because its flexible schedule would allow him to continue working full time, but also because of the way he could tailor his studies to his professional interests. For example, Noronha completed a research paper on the topic of credit default swaps: a particular type of derivative that had risen to prominence around the time, blamed by many for triggering the housing market collapse at the heart of the broader financial crisis.

“I loved the Osgoode experience,” Noronha says. “The professors were very practical and knowledgeable.”

He also appreciated the chance to network with his Financial Law LLM classmates, who came from a diverse range of working backgrounds, including lawyers working in private practice, in-house legal groups and government, as well as non-legal professionals in the financial industry.

“From a professional perspective, I made so many great contacts. I still keep in touch with many of them today,” Noronha adds.