Investment Companies & Advisers

JORDEN BURT's Investment Companies & Advisers Industry Group provides our clients a full range of corporate, regulatory, and litigation services. Our clients include registered and private investment companies, as well as their sponsors, and investment advisers located throughout the country. Our lawyers regularly counsel clients on new financial product designs and related regulatory compliance matters and on complex litigation matters, including class action defense. We also regularly advise clients on significant regulatory and legislative developments, and serve as a client resource for identifying emerging regulatory and litigation risks. Our lawyers, who include former officials of the SEC, provide practical advice and insights based on decades of experience counseling and providing litigation services to clients. Our interdisciplinary approach includes legal fields of particular importance to our clients. In addition to securities law and litigation, these fields include anti-money laundering compliance, electronic commerce, insurance, intellectual property, privacy, tax, and ERISA.

Our Services

Mutual Funds & Advisers

We represent mutual funds and investment advisers throughout the country on a full range of matters. Many of our client funds are offered through variable insurance products and qualified retirement plans. Our lawyers have decades of experience handling the complex interdisciplinary legal and regulatory issues that arise in the development, marketing, and distribution of financial products in these markets. We also represent independent directors of mutual funds as independent legal counsel where appropriate. The following is a list of representative matters on which we advise and counsel our mutual fund and adviser clients. A more detailed list can be found here.

• Corporate organization and fund formation;
• Fund governance;
• Review and negotiation of fund service provider contracts, including annual reviews and due diligence of investment advisory and sub-advisory agreements and distribution arrangements;
• Preparation, review, and filing of fund registration statements, prospectuses, and shareholder reports;
• Review and filing of fund sales and promotional material;
• Review and filing of Form ADV;
• Preparation and review of adviser brochures;
• Regulatory compliance counseling and in-house legal and compliance training;
• Annual compliance reviews and the development and implementation of compliance programs;
• Fund mergers and liquidations, fund re-domestications, and adviser acquisitions;
• Applications for exemptive and no-action relief;
• SEC inspections and examinations, including preparedness measures;
• Threatened and pending enforcement actions; and
• Litigation defense and dispute resolution counseling.

Hedge Funds & Other Private Investment Companies

We counsel hedge fund managers and other sponsors of private investment companies on a full range of matters with respect to the formation and operation of their private fund offerings. We provide advice on such matters as compliance with federal and state securities and investment adviser regulation, securities and adviser registration exemptions, the review and preparation of partnership agreements, subscription agreements, and fund offering documents, and SEC reporting requirements.

Private Placement Variable Insurance Products

We also represent insurance companies on a full range of legal and regulatory matters relating to the structuring and offering of private placement variable insurance products for the bank- and corporate-owned life insurance and individual high net worth markets. We also provide advice to hedge funds and other private investment funds that desire to offer their funds through private placement variable insurance products as underlying investment options.