Ian Scorah

Ian Scorah joined Cleveland & Co in 2026 as General Counsel, Investment Management, and leads the firm’s Investment Management practice. He brings more than 25 years of senior legal experience developed inside some of the world’s largest asset management businesses, advising fund and asset managers across the full lifecycle of investment management activity: fund establishment and structuring across UCITS, AIFs, ETFs, LTAFs and alternative vehicles; investment management agreements and delegation arrangements; distribution documentation; and operational service provider contracting.

Ian read Law at Merton College, Oxford, and trained and qualified at Travers Smith, where he was admitted as a solicitor in 1997 and specialised in asset management within the firm’s newly established Financial Services and Markets group. He built the balance of his career in-house, at Hermes Pensions Management (now Federated Hermes) and Morley Fund Management (now Aviva Investors), before joining PIMCO Europe in 2007, where he served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel across nearly 14 years and two stints with the firm.

His record at PIMCO is distinguished. He led the establishment of the firm’s European ETF platform, a joint venture with Source Markets (now part of Invesco), which brought the first actively managed fixed-income ETF to the European market. He later directed the establishment of PIMCO’s DIFC office in Dubai, securing the DFSA licence and coordinating filings across multiple jurisdictions. As lead of the client contracting team he negotiated complex separately managed accounts for central banks, sovereign wealth funds and pension funds throughout EMEA, and served as legal lead on SFDR, Consumer Duty and SMCR implementation.

In 2014 Ian was appointed Partner and Head of Legal at a start-up hedge fund manager, where as fourth hire he took responsibility for every legal dimension of building the business. He has also advised BlackRock, Baring Asset Management, Farallon Capital Europe and Citigroup in a consultancy capacity, contributed to industry lobbying on the EU Money Market Fund Regulation and the UCITS eligible assets consultation, and served on the Investment Association’s Legal Committee.

Having spent his career inside the institutions he now advises, Ian combines technical depth with an instinct for the commercial and operational realities his clients face, enabling him to offer pragmatic solutions to complex problems.

Outside of work, Ian enjoys spending time with his wife and six-year-old son. He is a keen skier and ski mountaineer, drawn to off-piste terrain in locations such as Kyrgyzstan, Greenland and Svalbard, and closer to home enjoys finding new routes on his gravel bike, cooking, and learning about wine.