Buddle Findlay has recruited Matthew Farrington to join its business services team as a senior solicitor. Farrington has returned to New Zealand after spending several years in Europe working for a hedge fund.

The move is Farrington’s first private-practice position, having previously worked solely in-house. Prior to leaving New Zealand, Farrington worked at the Ministry of Economic Development, which is responsible for some of the proposals for financial sector reform that are currently being discussed. “I suppose I was a gamekeeper turned poacher,” Farrington said, who specialises in financial sector regulation and securities.

Buddle Findlay’s bolstering of its business services team comes at a time that the New Zealand government is looking at financial sector reform in the wake of the financial crisis. The Capital Markets Development Taskforce today called for a specialist agricultural capital markets centre to commercialise innovation for the country’s farming industry.

The taskforce also recommended looking at reducing tax and regulatory biases between different types of investment, reviewing the Securities Act, and reviewing regulatory agencies including the Securities Commission in order to consolidate their market conduct and oversight functions.