Registered Funds & Retail Products

Our Investment Funds Practice Group includes a dynamic, market-leading registered funds team advising on all aspects of retail investment management. Clients turn to our team when seeking to launch and operate a retail-oriented business, employ innovative and sophisticated solutions and navigate the evolving regulatory landscape applicable to these products and their sponsors.

Our team members have extensive hands-on experience addressing novel and complex issues arising under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and other federal securities laws. We regularly counsel clients on the organization and registration of new funds, exemptive applications and no-action requests, SEC examinations, and matters relating to investment advisory, brokerage, custody, securities lending and transfer agent services.

Our clients reflect a wide array of long-standing asset managers and fund complexes, along with a significant number of “alternative” sponsors who are more recent entrants into the retail market. Our team has significant experience structuring, forming, launching and advising on the ongoing operations of products, including funds of funds, "direct access" funds, BDCs and REITs across alternative asset classes, including private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure, utilizing complicated investment strategies, including complex derivative structuring and other liquid alternative arrangements.

Over the years, our team has been instrumental in helping clients structure, manage and oversee retail products offered across a variety of distribution channels to the general public or to high net worth investors, including:

• Open-end funds, including mutual funds, variable funds and exchange-traded funds
• Publicly listed and privately offered closed-end funds
• Interval funds and tender offer funds
• Registered funds of private funds and master-feeder fund structures
• Business development companies (BDCs), including privately offered, non-traded and publicly listed BDCs
• Real estate investment trusts (REITs), including privately offered and non-traded REITs, as well as REITs registered under the 1940 Act
• Commingled investment trusts for ERISA plans

We work closely with our strategic GP advisory team to advise clients on seed capital and other contribution transactions, as well as mergers and acquisitions, restructurings and consolidations involving both sponsors and fund complexes. Our team also collaborates to help clients establish and operate asset management joint ventures to distribute and manage retail funds.

Our registered funds team is multidisciplinary, bringing together partners with experience in such areas as Private Equity, Mergers & Acquisitions, Tax, ERISA, Banking & Financial Institutions, REITs, Derivatives, ESG & Impact, Debt Finance and Litigation. In particular, the registered funds team also has a significant amount of Capital Markets experience. We regularly represent closed-end funds and BDCs or their designated underwriters in connection with initial public offerings, secondary offerings, rights offerings and public and private debt offerings.

A number of our partners served in a variety of senior roles at the SEC, while others have prior in-house experience at major fund complexes, and we work closely with the Regulatory Solutions and Government, Regulatory & Internal Investigations practices. This background allows us to work effectively with regulators on behalf of our clients in dealing with issues relating to product development, SEC examinations and enforcement actions, and regulatory questions, and helps us to better understand our clients’ business goals and constraints when developing products and solutions for them.

Our team is very active and highly regarded in the investment management industry with several partners recognized by Chambers USA, Chambers Global, The Legal 500 and IFRL1000. We maintain close working relationships with several industry groups, and our partners regularly serve as panelists, moderators and speakers at industry conferences.