Perkins Coie

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The proper treatment of angel investing groups under the Federal securities laws can be a vexing question. If it were appropriate to describe the angel investing group as a “company” as defined in Section 2(a)(8) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, and if the “company” were appropriately viewed as issuing interests or shares, then the angel investing group would have to seek to rely on Sections 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) of the Investment Company Act and comply with the requirements of Regulation D under the Securities Act of 1933. Yet these views seem to beg the questions of who is giving investment advice to the “company” and who is acting as a broker in offering and selling interests in the “company.”…

This series of posts has examined the misguided efforts of the House Financial Services Committee to reform the existing process for issuing exemptive orders pursuant to Section 6(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”). The previous posts discussed the problems with the current process and why Section 848 of the pending Financial Choice Act of 2017 would make matters much worse. This concluding post considers the possibility that Section 848 may not accomplish anything and then discusses other possible reforms to the exemptive process that may prove more fruitful.…

This series of posts examines the misguided efforts of the House Financial Services Committee to reform the existing process for issuing exemptive orders pursuant to Section 6(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”). My first three posts discussed the current exemptive process and some of its significant shortcomings. This post discusses the changes to the process proposed in Section 848 of the pending Financial Choice Act of 2017 and why these proposed changes would undermine investor protections provided by the 1940 Act. It is difficult to overstate what bad public policy Section 848 represents.

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This series of posts examines the misguided efforts of the House Financial Services Committee to reform the existing process for issuing exemptive orders pursuant to Section 6(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Section 848 of the pending Financial Choice Act 2017 would attempt to accelerate the process of obtaining exemptive orders by forcing the SEC to grant or deny an exemptive application within a fixed time frame. My first post discussed the current process of obtaining an exemptive order. This post examines a problem overlooked by proposed Section 848, perhaps due to the Committee’s limited understanding of the exemptive process.…

This series of posts examines the misguided efforts of the House Financial Services Committee to reform the existing process for issuing exemptive orders pursuant to Section 6(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Section 848 of the pending Financial Choice Act 2017 would attempt to accelerate the process of obtaining exemptive orders by forcing the SEC to grant or deny an exemptive application within a fixed time frame. My prior post discussed the current process of obtaining an exemptive order. This post examines the problem at which Section 848 appears to be aimed. A later post will explain why it misses its mark.…

Most observers of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (“1940 Act”) would agree that, (i) without the exemptive authority in Section 6(c), Section 17(b), and in other provisions in the 1940 Act and (ii) without the manner in which the SEC and its staff have used that authority, the 1940 Act would have become obsolete insofar as it would not have been possible to adapt it to some of the most popular financial products developed during the last 40 years.  It is also true that the process for obtaining exemptive orders is far from perfect and has proven to be frustrating on more than one occasion. Presumably, these frustrations motivated a proposed “reform” to the exemptive application process as part of the pending Financial Choice Act 2017.  Specifically, Section 848 would attempt to accelerate the process of obtaining exemptions by forcing the SEC to grant or deny an exemptive application within a fixed time frame.  This proposal: (a) does not reflect a sophisticated understanding of the process it seeks to change and, therefore, (b) fails to identify the actual problems with the process, so that Section 848 would almost certainly (c) result in superficial changes at best and at worst seriously undermine the protections the 1940 Act provides to shareholders of investment companies.  This series of posts will consider each of these points, before recommending more appropriate changes to the processes of obtaining exemptions.…

Our previous post discussed how a family office registered as an investment adviser (RIA) under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (Advisers Act) might underestimate the scope of its custody of family assets for purposes of Rule 206(4)‑2. The problem is that the rule’s definition of custody extends to all funds and securities an RIA has the power to withdraw, even those not held for investment. This post considers how a family office with sufficient personnel to independently staff its RIA can limit the scope of funds and securities subject to Rule 206(4)‑2.…

The staff of the Division of Investment Management (IM) recently issued a flurry of interpretive guidance regarding when advisers are deemed to have custody of their clients’ funds and securities. The guidance covers transfers among a client’s custodial accounts, standing letters of instruction to a custodian, and inadvertent custody under the client’s custodial agreement. The guidance does not affect family offices exempted from the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (Advisers Act) by Rule 202(a)(11)(G)‑1. The guidance also does not address issues commonly faced by family offices that must register under the Advisers Act.
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Shortly after my post on the SEC’s recent settlement with Apollo Global Management went up, the SEC released a settlement with another private equity fund manager: W.L. Ross & Co. LLC (“WLR”). Like the Apollo case, the SEC sanctioned WLR for failing to fully disclose how it was collecting its fees. But WLR paid a lower penalty than Apollo, perhaps due to its greater perceived cooperation with the SEC.…