Our Investment Adviser Regulation and Compliance team counsels clients on a broad range of regulatory and operational issues facing registered and unregistered investment advisers. Our clients include retail investment advisers, as well as advisers to private funds including private equity funds and hedge funds, investment advisers that are also registered as broker-dealers, advisers that specialize in valuation services and fairness opinions, advisers exempt from registration and affiliates of advisers engaged in cross-marketing activities. We have extensive experience counseling foreign and domestic financial institutions on issues related to their status as investment advisers, registration requirements and assisting advisers register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assist both advisers, and advisers seeking registration, in developing and improving written compliance policies, codes of ethics and supervisory procedures, as well as by conducting reviews of their supervisory systems. We routinely counsel firms on compliance with their fiduciary duties and assist firms identify and mitigate conflicts of interest. We also assist our clients in responding to examinations, inquiries and industry sweeps, and remediating identified deficiencies.
Key Facts
- We counsel investment advisers on issues related to compliance with the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended, and the regulations thereunder. We also counsel investment advisers on state regulatory requirements that apply to investment advisers and their advisory representatives.
- We routinely counsel clients on insider trading, conflicts of interest, fiduciary duties and other legal issues.
- We assist investment advisers and their clients in the negotiation and administration of prime brokerage agreements and similar arrangements.
- We assist clients with succession issues associated with buying or selling advisory businesses.
- We counsel investment advisers with respect to collateral consequences that arise in connection with settling disciplinary actions brought by federal and state regulators, including counseling with respect to issues concerning statutory disqualification under federal and state securities laws and regulations.
- We represent clients before federal and state regulators and assist them obtain no-action and interpretative relief.
- We conduct annual compliance reviews for clients as required by Rule 206(4)-7.
- We assist investment advisers with respect to political activities, including compliance with federal and state regulations covering pay-to-pay, campaign finance, lobbying and procurement activities, and ethics rules including limitations on gifts and entertainment.
- We guide investment advisers through the issues arising from dual broker-dealer/investment adviser registration status and investment advisers and their affiliates through the issues associated with “multi-hatted” employees engaged in advisory and other activities.