Nizam is a Partner of RHTLaw Taylor Wessing and is a Director of RHT Compliance Solutions, a dedicated financial services compliance consultancy/solutions provider.
He has had 20 years of experience and expertise in financial services regulatory compliance and litigation.
He was Executive Director and Head of Compliance for Southeast Asia in Morgan Stanley Singapore. Nizam was also formerly Senior Vice President and Head of Compliance for Southeast Asia at Lehman Brothers Singapore, Executive Director (Legal and Compliance) in Nomura Singapore and Senior Legal Counsel of Citigroup (Corporate and Investment Bank). Nizam’s area of compliance coverage included markets, investment banking, corporate banking, private banking and asset management. Nizam’s product coverage included fixed income, equities, commodities, currency, rates, derivatives, futures, structured deposits.
Nizam spent six years as a regulator at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), where he was Deputy Director and Head of the Market Conduct Policy Division. There, Nizam worked on various policy reviews relating to the capital markets, including various policy reviews leading to the enactment of the Securities and Futures Act, the Financial Advisers Act, Trust Companies Act and the Business Trust Act. Nizam also conducted a review on the application of competition law on financial services. Nizam also worked with other international financial services regulators on a variety of cross-border regulatory projects.
The policy reviews that Nizam oversaw at MAS included: (1) revamp of regulatory framework on markets/recognized market operators, (2) dual currency investments, (3) credit card solitication rules, (4) disclosure requirements for investment products, (5) rationalisation of wholesale/retail investors, (6) extra-territorial application, (7) regulation of traded life/endowment policies, (8) civil penalty regime for market misconduct, (9) review of insider trading, (10) licensing and business conduct issues, (11) policies behind regulation capital markets intermediaries, (12) implementation of recommendations of Corporate Law and Regulatory Framework Committee (CLRFC).
At the MAS, Nizam also worked on policy issues relating to corporate governance issues. Issues include: (1) review of corporate governance code, (2) quarterly reporting , (3) disclosure of operating and financial reports by listed companies and (4) drafting of the Code of Corporate Governance for listed companies.
Having graduated from the NUS Law School in 1991 on a Public Service Commission Local Merit Scholarship, Nizam started his legal career as Deputy Public Prosecutor/State Counsel at the Commercial Affairs Department, where he prosecuted high-profile corporate and market misconduct cases including insider trading, market rigging and fraud.