Exploring the legal and regulatory issues affecting the worldwide asset management community.
By: Gayle Bowen and Shane Geraghty
Ireland has taken a significant step forward in the implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive II (AIFMD II), with confirmation that the enabling Statutory Instruments have now been signed and are set to come into force.
Read MoreBy: Jon-Luc Dupuy, Jennifer R. Gonzalez, Mark P. Goshko, Jordan A. Knight, Pablo J. Man, Keri E. Riemer, Tristen Rodgers, and George Zornada
On 27 April 2026, the staff (Staff) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a no-action letter that extends to open-end funds, subject to certain conditions, exemptive relief that permits business development companies (BDCs) and registered closed-end funds to co-invest alongside affiliates in transactions otherwise prohibited under Sections 17(d) and 57(a)(4) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended. This relief opens the door for open-end funds to participate, subject to their 15% liquidity restrictions, in co-investment transactions that were previously unavailable to these funds.
Read MoreBy: Thoreau A. Bartmann, Richard W. Burnett, Ruth E. Delaney, Lance C. Dial, Pablo J. Man, and Sarah V. Riddell
On 20 April 2026, the SEC and CFTC jointly proposed yet another round of amendments to Form PF to eliminate filing obligations for many private fund advisers and reduce burdens for many of those who remain subject to the form.
Read MoreBy: Thoreau A. Bartmann, Meghan E. Flinn, Theodore L. Kornobis, and Neil T. Smith
On 7 April 2026, the SEC announced its fiscal year 2025 enforcement results, speaking not only to key actions from the past year but also to its vision for enforcement going forward. The results were the first from the commission under Chairman Atkins, and featured several notable elements:
Read MoreBy: Thoreau A. Bartmann, Jessica D. Cohn, and Kevin R. Gustafson
With this fourth SEC approval, share class ETFs are now ready to go live.
Read MoreBy: Thoreau A. Bartmann, Lance C. Dial, Todd S. Fishman, Pablo J. Man, and Sarah V. Riddell
Prediction markets and event contracts have gone mainstream. Prediction market platforms offer contracts on virtually any event you can imagine, and increasingly advisers and their personnel, including portfolio managers, are signing up. If your compliance program hasn’t caught up to the issues that prediction markets raise, you may have a problem you don’t know about yet.
Read MoreBy: Sasha Burstein, Ruth E. Delaney, Pablo J. Man, Robert L. Sichel
On 30 March 2026, Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposed rule, in response to President Trump’s August 2025 executive order, that seeks to clarify DOL’s position on fiduciary duties in connection with the selection of investment options for participant-directed individual account plans (e.g. 401(k) plans) – including investment options that feature exposure to alternative assets – and would establish a “safe harbor” for fiduciaries who follow a prudent process in making available such investment options to plan participants. Comments on the proposal are due on or before 60 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register.
Read MoreBy: Thoreau A. Bartmann, Lance C. Dial, and Sarah V. Riddell
On 17 March 2026, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint interpretive release establishing a formal taxonomy for crypto assets and when such assets are securities under federal law, which is a critical analytical point in determining if regulations apply. While the release is an interpretation of existing laws, and not a final rulemaking, it is a major step toward a durable crypto regulatory regime.
Read MoreBy: Thoreau Bartmann, Sasha Burstein, and Pablo Man
On 25 February 2026,1 the SEC, in one of the few cases brought to-date against a private fund adviser under Chair Atkins, settled charges with a private fund adviser regarding its valuation practices. This case involved conduct dating back to the early days of the COVID market dislocations, with the SEC finding that the adviser failed to adequately fair value loans it originated and later sold to private fund clients in principal transactions despite significant changes in markets caused by the pandemic.
Read MoreBy: Sarah Riddell, Pablo Man, and Martina Sandoval Iriarte
As previously discussed in our client alert, the industry celebrated the no-action relief from registration as a commodity pool operator (CPO) (the Relief). The Relief, however, raised certain questions in connection with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) staff’s class delegation relief under CFTC No-Action Letter No. 14-126 (Letter 14-126), which requires that the “Designated CPO” to whom the non-registrant (i.e., the “Delegating CPO”) delegates CPO responsibilities be a registered CPO. In particular, the Relief called into question whether private fund general partners or boards of directors of offshore private funds, who are Delegating CPOs, would need to continue delegating CPO responsibilities to a registered CPO pursuant to Letter 14-126 or whether they could instead delegate these responsibilities to a registered investment adviser that relied on the Relief.
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